


Asset Acquired

by cat_77



Series: Marked [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Injury, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, People being stupid, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 21:04:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7699315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulbonds take a little time to adjust to, especially when they involve incredibly stubborn people.  Trying to find their way would be so much easier if others didn't interrupt with plans of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"That's it!"

"That's it for real, or that's it for the day?" Darcy asked doubtfully.

"For real," Angie smiled. The woman was far too cheerful for her own damned good considering the torture she had put Darcy through in just that afternoon alone. Physical therapy sucked. More so when she knew her usual reward for sweating and grunting was sadly lacking.

Darcy took a long drink from her bottle of water, trying to cool herself down from the inside out. "No more sessions?" she confirmed.

Angie just smiled again. "No more therapy sessions," she promised. "I'd recommend that you continue your workout routine, incorporate what we've been doing and increase the weights gradually, but your shoulder and your knee are back up to where they were pre-accident, maybe even a little better."

"Thank fuck," Darcy muttered before she took another gulp.

This time, Angie laughed. "I wasn't that bad, was I? I know it was hard, but look what you've accomplished!" She took a tiny sip from her own bottle. "If you still want to meet, we can. It would be more as a personal trainer than a physical therapist, but I kind of have the feeling you have a few other volunteers for that particular role." She looked towards the door and found it suspiciously empty of the usual entourage and frowned. "Where are they anyway?"

"Most likely beating the shit out of Reed Richards for his little stunt in Central Park yesterday," she replied. Angie had clearance to know at least about that, one had to when one worked with the classified world of the Avengers on damn near a daily basis. She was pretty much slumming it with Darcy in comparison but her services were greatly appreciated anyway, complaints and all. "Cap promised to use his Disappointed Voice and the Buckster planned on glaring, maybe sharpening a knife or two. If that failed, they were just going to let Natasha at him for breaking Clint again. There's no way this hasn't devolved into violence yet."

Angie made a face at that. "So I have to clear my schedule for a Barton Special again?" She sighed with mock dramatics. "On the one hand, he always pushes harder than he should and re-injures himself faster than the others. On the other, he always skips out before he should and they still pay me my full fee for putting up with him."

Darcy laughed at that, knowing she was probably not exaggerating in the least. "So I was the good one?" she guessed.

She received a look that could only be considered grateful for all her troubles. "Oh, honey, you were the best behaved I've had in ages," Angie promised.

Darcy washed up and made her way up to the labs to check in on Jane for the afternoon. She was tired, but her body didn't hold any of the lingering pain or weakness that it had for the past few weeks. She knew Angie, for as much crap as she had given her, had done her job and done it well. Her dislocated shoulder was back in place and stronger than ever, her knee no longer hurt just to walk, and her ankle was in good enough shape that she actually ran on it for the first time in ages. She'd send her a basket of cookies, but the overly health conscious woman would probably complain about the sugar content. Maybe a granola basket instead? All organic scones? Fresh fruit handpicked by forest fairies from their top secret grove? 

"What's up, boss lady?" she asked as she entered the lab.

Jane looked up from a rather large display of numbers and shook her head. "I think Richards just set my research back by three weeks. That crazy portal of his upset the gravitational readings of the area to the point I'm going to need to repeatedly run tests to make sure they won't disrupt my experiment in explosive ways."

"I have the feeling you mean that literally," Darcy said, earning a smile. She got a bigger one after her offer of, "Tequila?"

Jane pushed her hair out of her face and agreed, "Tomorrow, I promise. This is going to take me all night."

Darcy helped with what she could and made sure dinner was both delivered and at least partially consumed before she received a notice that The Boys were back from their intimidation mission. She decided to stop by before she headed home for the night, and was more than glad that she did.

She knocked out of a combination of habit and being raised with actual manners even though she had a standing invitation to come by at anytime. She heard the lock snick open and entered, not knowing if access was granted by biometrics or actual request of those who may or may not be inside. She had only been there a handful of times before but, really, the place put her little studio apartment to shame and she goggled at it every time. Huge and spacious with floor to ceiling windows that could be tinted or blocked or a million other settings, plush carpets and hardwood floors and butter-soft leather couches that you could just sink into if given the chance.

It appeared Thing One and Thing Two had taken that chance, and then some. Her favorite reformed assassin was straddling the good and classic hero and kissing him senseless. Hands were above the waist so far, which meant they had just gotten started. Not that she would have objected to getting there a few minutes later, really. It was always such a pretty view. Bucky pulled back slightly though, their foreheads still knocked together, and greeted her with, "Hey, Darce. Wanna help me calm him down before he does something stupid like see just how far Richards can stretch?"

"Me?" Steve chuckled. He turned to her and said, "He's the one who asked if the guy could make bullets bounce and offered to try for the sake of science."

"Well, if it was for the sake of science," she pretended to muse. She pecked them both on the cheek and plopped down beside them, letting the couch do its best to swallow her whole. It wasn't the first time she had caught them pawing at each other, and probably wouldn't be the last. They kept the PDAs to a minimum, but let loose in the privacy of their own rooms and damn but she was a lucky girl to bear witness to that. "How far were you going to stretch him anyway?" she asked, getting her mind back on track. They were pretty. It was hard.

Steve blushed, which meant it was Bucky that answered, "Brooklyn." She snorted, but he eyed her questioningly, hand drifting out to lightly trace the soul mark on the side of her neck. It was fair as Steve's own hand was resting on her knee just above her other one. 

She didn't exactly remember getting that one nearly as clearly what with the whole blacking out thing, but she eventually got the full story of a certain national treasure ignoring all protocols, totally destroying her already torn favorite pair of jeans, and checking on her injuries himself before any actual professional could do so sans the required gloves. Proprietary, that's what they were, even before their matches were acknowledged. 

She was drawn back to the present by a huff of, "You're damn near vibrating with something, doll. Out with it before we embarrass ourselves trying to get you to talk."

That could have been fun, but she knew far more entertaining pastimes awaited. "No more PT!" she exclaimed, bouncing in place and inadvertently dislodging their hands.

"That's excellent news!" Steve replied, leaning over to kiss her temple. "Did you want to go out to dinner to celebrate?"

She crossed her arms in front of her even though it moved her slightly out of their reach, and frowned. "Oh, hell no, you don't get to back out of this now, Captain Cowardly!" she scolded. "A promise is a promise!"

Steve's eyes grew huge, but Bucky burst out laughing. He slid off Steve's lap before he could be pushed off and managed the worst imitation of solemnity that Darcy had ever seen when he agreed, "And Captain America never breaks a promise."

Steve looked between them, clearly at a loss when he spluttered, "But... Now?"

Darcy raised an eyebrow in his direction. "Like you two weren't busy getting hot and bothered before I walked in. I know I was hot and/or bothered just watching, and I wasn't even the one in your lap." She had been lucky enough to see the two of them in actual action before. Hell, she had been lucky enough to participate in said actual action before. She would really not object to doing so again. Either way, really, she'd be more than fine with. Under normal circumstances, that was. There were promises made after all, and integrity was on the line. Or something.

Bucky smirked and pulled her to her feet, offering her a kiss that definitely constituted the hot part of the equation. "You sure you're up to it?" he asked, close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips as clearly as his thumb on her pulse point against the small star.

She reached down and lightly grabbed him through his jeans, this time offering the eyebrow in his direction instead when he arched into her touch. "Shouldn't I be asking you about that whole 'up' thing?" she asked even though she literally held the answer in her hand.

They had made a deal. Scratch that. The two overprotective lunks that she had the misfortune of being soul matched with had made a deal that they enforced with great fervor. Make out sessions were fine, getting handsy was fine, but certain sex acts were off the table until she was deemed fully healed. Said deeming had to be made by an actual professional and not her pouting and them giving in. To date, yes, more than a single orgasm had been had. Oh, so many more. To date, no, she had not been allowed to mount them and ride them the way she really wanted to because they both feared she would further damage her knee and ankle, if not her shoulder.

Whoever created the portal that led to her getting knocked on her ass had a lot to answer for. Yes, she met her soulmates, as in plural, as in proving her thesis more than right. Unfortunately, she had been dislocated, torn, and sprained in the process and had to endure weeks of hovering and limitations when she knew she was more than capable of handling far more than they were willing to give her just yet. The time had come to pay the piper.

"Compromise?" Bucky offered when he was able to find his words again.

Which is how she found herself slowly divested of her clothing with lips and tongues and fingers both flesh and metal tracing over her skin. Special attention was paid to the pulse point that bore the bright red outline of a star, and the little spot behind her knee that looked like a blue burst of energy, both places far more sensitive that anywhere else, but only to the touch of a certain two people. Two people who didn't care that she was soft and curved where they were muscled and hard, small and occasionally clumsy where they were all coordinated and larger than life. How the universe thought they should belong to each other she would never know, but she so appreciated it all the same.

James knelt between her legs and shifted them slightly further apart. He looked up at her with a truly filthy smile before he both grabbed her ass and brought his lips to her core. She grasped at his shoulders and fought the urge to grind down into him as he unerringly found and circled her clit with the tip of his tongue before using the flat of it to lick across her center. She swore he started to spell out his, her, and Steve's names against her sensitive skin, with barely a pause for breath in between, and she didn't know whether she should laugh or moan. She felt the warmth growing in the pit of her belly almost instantly, memory of the not so distant past and the overwhelming power of the mark match both playing a role. She dug her bare toes into the rich carpet to find purchase and she offered the warning of, "I swear to fuck, if you stop I will kill you. Don't ask me how yet, but I will."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he promised before he sucked her clit between his lips and she was gone. He held her as she shook through her orgasm, tongue offering tiny strokes to egg it on just that little bit longer until he finally relented, chin shiny with her release when he called over his shoulder, "Got her good and ready for you, punk."

Her legs were a little less than steady, but she was determined as she marched over to the "compromise" which was Steve sat atop one of the padded kitchen chairs. His shirt was off and his jeans were unbuttoned but still distressingly on. "Strip, soldier," she ordered, just to see the way his eyes flared that extra little bit.

Surprisingly, he did as told and shucked the last of his clothing, pausing only to lick his way into James' mouth before he sat back down again. His cock was hard and leaking and she licked her lips in anticipation, only to have a finger shook in her direction when she headed towards her prize. "No kneeling. Not yet," he reminded her. He had argued that she just finished her PT and should take a break for a day or two. Given that he had been feeling her up at the time, she had foolishly agreed.

She rolled her eyes but took the condom offered by Bucky and rolled it on with ease, offering a few extra strokes just to watch blue eyes damn near roll back into a blond crowned head. She swung a leg over both of his and let his large hands span her waist before she used her grip to tease at her entrance a few times, just enough for his hips to start edging upwards of their own accord. 

Finally, she lined him up and began to sink down, inch by precious inch. He stretched and filled her slowly, held himself back when it was clear that he wanted to thrust upwards so very, very much. When her thighs finally rested atop his own, she needed to take a moment to appreciate just how very full she felt. "Yeah, this," she whispered, earning herself a smile.

"If only you two could see how you look right now," Bucky said from behind her, nearly as breathless as she was.

Steve began to lip at her throat and neck, tiny nips and kisses that rained down to her collarbone and across to her shoulder. "Whenever you're ready," he breathed against her skin.

She lifted herself slightly only to sink back down again. Her groan of approval was amplified by a chorus of two others with the action, so she did it again, and then one more time. She gripped onto Steve's seriously massive shoulders to steady herself and wondered if Boy Genius had realized she had to use both her knees and her ankles to push herself upwards and press downwards again and again. Maybe that was his plan all along to see if she could handle it, or maybe he just didn't want her grinding her knee into whatever surface they found themselves on. Maybe she was just thinking too much at this point and needed to hold on and enjoy the ride.

And it was a ride, because good and gracious Steve never lasted that way for long. Oh, he was still careful because that was ingrained in his DNA, but get him worked up enough and that wholesome image was a thing of the past. His hands shifted from her waist to her ass and his grip changed from resting to controlling as he began to bodily lift her and then thrust up as he pushed her down again. Soon there was very little muscle action at all on her part save for where she gripped onto him with everything she had.

She reluctantly realized that this had likely been his plan all along and really would have frowned at him for it, but she was far too busy enjoying the sensations for now. Besides, she could save that for later when she ranted at him for not having done this before since clearly full use of her limbs was not at play.

There was a second pair of hands on her now, she knew this because she could feel every single finger as they caressed her skin. Bucky pressed up behind her, metal cupping her breast while his flesh pressed against her own in far more sensitive areas. His lips trailed across where his soulmate's had been only minutes prior before they found his favorite spot and latched on.

She was kinda grateful that no matter how much her boys kissed, sucked, or outright bit the mark against her throat, it never seemed to bruise. She was not about to mention that to anyone, didn't know if it was something inherent about soul marks or something specific to marks tying others to enhanced beings, but she wasn't about the look a gift horse in the mouth. Not when she could ride them instead.

It didn't take her long, what with Steve filling her so perfectly and Bucky using his talented fingers so well. The pooling warmth in the pit of her belly spread outward, toes and fingers tingling as she chased after her orgasm with everything she had. Steve buried his face in the valley of her breasts, tongue sneaking out to trace a bead of sweat while James' hands shifted and stroked with all new intentions. When she felt the press of cool metal against her clit, she gave up the fight, taking solace in the fact she dragged Steve right down with her in her bliss.

"That was... yeah," she gasped when she found her words again. Her breasts heaved with every breath, oversensitive where they rubbed against Steve's heated skin and the rough hints of his stubble.

"Not done yet, doll," James whispered in her ear. He licked along the shell of it before he reminded her, "Think you said you wanted us both?"

She couldn't help her clench of anticipation, or the wave of aftershocks that followed. Steve twitched where he was still buried deep within her, not quite ready for a second round, but getting there fast. "Separate this time," he groaned in reminder, always the reasonable one. They had insisted on taking turns with her while she healed, each having their own nights or afternoons as the case may be, save for that first time, not wanting to overwhelm her quite yet even if both were damn near always present and one moment of pleasure was usually quickly followed by another. "Next time is negotiable," he promised and even sealed it with a kiss because he truly was corny like that.

Turned out he was just distracting her, a fact that became obvious when the hands that gripped her shifted again.

Bucky pulled her up and back, and both she and Steve whimpered in disappointment at the loss of their connection. Or at least she did until she felt another connection ready to be made, Bucky's cock already sliding along her folds, hot and ready. Steve reached forward and adjusted her position, and she soon found she wasn't empty for long. Bucky began to push into place, arms wrapped soundly around her from behind as he held and steadied her like he always did.

She was bent at the waist, hands still gripping Steve's shoulders while Bucky slowly pumped into and out of her. She shifted slightly, letting the fingers of one hand rest against the nape of his neck while the other slid down slightly to clutch against a massive bicep. It could have been awkward, but Steve's hands were everywhere now, tweaking a nipple, running up the curve of her thigh, holding her head steady while he kissed her soundly.

Reluctantly, she released her hold on him completely while Bucky lowered himself onto what must have been another chair he had dragged over while she was otherwise indisposed earlier. Her back to his front, his lips to her shoulder while he was seated fully within, her legs spread wide over his muscled own.

"I'd throw you on the floor and fuck you proper, but I think Stevie-boy would have a conniption if you got rug burn," he breathed against her ear.

That was fine though, that was good. Seated as they were, he was buried as deep as he could go. The way he spread his legs just that little bit more meant that her own were spread even wider, divesting her of any leverage she might have had. She got the memo, signed, sealed and delivered: she was not to do any of the work this time 'round either. Considering her legs already felt like jello, she was fine with that, even if it meant both of her soul matches had completely usurped her plans.

Despite her want, her utter need to move, he kept her there for an eternity. Not that he stayed still during this time. His fingers once again unerringly found her clit and began their attack, his other hand latched to her hip to keep her in place until he decided otherwise.

"Come for me, doll?" he whispered against her shoulder.

"Already did," she reminded him. She was stalling though, knew it wasn't a matter of her giving in so much as her body needing certain stimulation if it was to reach its next peak. She was close though, and decided to fight dirty. She squeezed internally and smiled at the muttered curses that her actions caused. As expected, he gave in first, never one to deny her fully, and he began to thrust. Just tiny barely there movements, but it was enough.

She hadn't realized that she had closed her eyes until she opened them again, met with the vision of Steve's face flushed with want. His hand was on his own cock because super soldier stamina was not just an urban legend. The combination of sight and sensation sent her spiraling, and at least she had the consolation of Bucky's hushed, "There we go," being a precursor to a lot of profanity as he followed her over the edge.

Steve helped her up and off of their match when her legs decided jello was far too sturdy of a descriptor. Instead of carrying her over to the couch though, he brought her all the way back to the bedroom where he lay her gently down on the bed and wrapped himself around her. Bucky joined them soon enough, and pulled the coverlet over them all. He offered himself as a pillow and she gladly accepted, snuggling close and wondering if she had it in her for another round or if nap time was warranted first.

Steve, ever the tactician, went for option number two with some extreme cuddling thrown in during the interim for good measure.

Quite some time later when she tried to catch her breath, she still wasn't sure if payment was made in full but was quite certain that had they had a damn good time trying. Unfortunately, her stomach chose that quiet lull of a moment to growl and, plastered as they were to each other, there was no way of hiding it.

As a surprise to exactly no one, Captain Protective rose up on one elbow and offered, "Dinner? The restaurant on the twenty-fourth floor is serving your favorite."

The restaurant on the twenty-fourth floor always served her favorite. Even if it wasn't on the menu, one soulful look from a certain super soldier and it was miraculously made. It probably didn't hurt that it was just macaroni and cheese with whatever smoked pork product was currently available, but she liked to think her guys held pull in a place like that.

"I'm sweaty, frizzy, and covered in, well, you," she protested. "I am so not fit for public consumption right now."

Sergeant McSubtle made the obvious comment about consuming and started to slide down her body again, but The Responsible One stopped him. "Food, Buck. Real food. The kind you eat on plates with forks and knives," he reminded him.

"Kinky," James offered, taking the resulting shove as his due. "Or we could try to make it for her. We've got noodles, milk, cheese - how hard can it be?"

Which is now Darcy spent the next half hour saddled up to the breakfast bar watching a disaster unfold. She had draped one of their discarded t-shirts over herself, pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail, and then laughed as she had to dodge flour and butter and whatever else the actual cookbook said was needed to make what she normally got out of a box. The result was far from refined but completely edible, so it totally counted.

They were cleaning up when Steve got a message. He took it to the other room, but she knew what it meant anyway: duty literally calling. Sure enough, he came back to confirm just that, but added, "Why don't you take her home while I look at whatever Hill found this time?" There was the slightest of pauses, and then, "Unless you want to stay the night? You know you are always more than welcomed."

Both of them hated that she lived alone. Both of them hated that she lived where she lived. Both of them had tried countless times to get her to move in, if not with them than at least to the tower, but she held off. She liked her independence, and she liked her neighbors despite their less than stellar extracurricular activities. She had freedom and, for as tiny as her studio apartment was, she had a space of her own to run to when things got too much. An old brick and mortar in Hell's Kitchen may not be a fancy glass tower in Manhattan, but it was home, at least for now.

She changed back into something a little bit more appropriate for public consumption and would have been fine heading out on her own had The Boys let her. Instead, Bucky drove her and even debated stopping for ice cream for dessert since usually any review with Hill went on for hours and was then mulled around with others before it was decided if and usually what action was to be taken. The standard delay was decidedly missing though, and Barnes' own phone went off about a block away from her place. That didn't stop him from parking and walking her up to the front entrance.

"Go," she told him. He looked behind her and she fought the urge to sigh. "I've got Geno and his boys and promise to be a good girl and stay in," she dutifully recited. She swore The Boys had a conversation with Geno in the not so distant past about expectations and looking the other way if they looked after her. She had been on good terms with the man and his associates before, but he was inexplicably protective lately and she had a feeling it wasn't just from her being injured. It was sad save for the part her neighbor was pretty much still just doing what he had been doing since she moved in.

Bucky kissed her goodbye and totally ignored the way she called after him to stay safe as he tore back out into traffic, but only after he had made sure she was tucked away inside the building and behind the reinforced door.

"In for the night, D?" Geno, as expected, asked from the stairwell.

"Looks like it," she agreed. He nodded and disappeared back up the steps, though she knew better than to think he wasn't still watching. She decided baking was in order, and hoped she had the ingredients for his crew's favorite cookies. It was the least she could do in trade off for his babysitting duties.

Freckles came barreling towards her the moment she closed her door. Every time she returned home, her cat acted as though he hadn't seen her in days and needed Mommy Time as soon as kittily possible. "Yeah, yeah, missed you too, furball," she grinned when he hopped up on the chair where she had set her bag. She accepted the loud purr she received from the tiny ball of orange fluff as the sentiment returned.

A quick perusal of the cupboards showed she had the makings for some chocolate chip cookies, so she set to work on the thank you gift that was in no way a distraction from worrying about her two mark matches heading off into likely danger. Since they had been matched, only a handful of missions had arisen and usually they had some idea of the timeline going into them. Neither had mentioned if this sucker was going to take an hour or a week, and she had the feeling they simply might not know. 

Sometimes being with actual heroes sucked.

She plated up half of what she made and tucked the others out reach from her way too smart cat for later. If she didn't eat them herself while wallowing in her own thoughts, she'd bring them to the lab tomorrow to share with Jane. She took the plate down the hall and knocked twice, waited the requisite time for someone to peek through the peep hole and tuck their weapons away, and then smiled when Geno himself opened the door.

"Aw, Darce, you didn't have to," he said by way of greeting, but he already had a cookie between his teeth.

"Sure I did," she replied. She waved to the handful of "friends" dotted around his living room, and received polite smiles and even two waves back in return. Geno's side of the building was split into two much larger apartments versus the six little studios that dotted her own. She had no idea if it had always been that way, or if he had renovated at one point as he had been there when she found the place. The only thing she knew for certain was that the building as a whole was pretty much his, if not on paper than in reality.

Ralphie elbowed Eddie, who spoke up as soon as he had a cookie in hand. "Hey, D, not to get your hackles up, but someone was pokin' at your door this afternoon. Said they had the wrong place when, ah, questioned. They went up to three after and their key worked there, but thought you should know," he shrugged.

"You recognize 'em?" she asked. Technically Geno and his boys didn't know that she had a Stark-upgraded lock on her door, but technically she didn't know his side business, so there was that. The real question was why she hadn't gotten a message back at the tower. Unless, of course, whoever it was hadn't gotten far enough to actually touch the thing, which was a possibility given how high alert the crew could be when they were in planning mode. Given that she hadn't seen any new packages arrive for at least a week, it was probably time.

Eddie shook his head and eyed the plate for another cookie. "Not really," he admitted. "But he went into Evie's place and you know how she rotates through her 'stands." 

Evie was nice, but had the attention span of a caffeinated gecko and her poor significant others tended to pay the price for it when she got bored. They were all good guys though because she had standards, so Darcy wasn't especially worried. Hell, her 'stand before last of Justin had even come over to fix the wheel on her bike long after she had moved on to the more recent Dana.

She also wasn't about to tell any of this to her overprotective boyfriends either. At least not until she knew more. If she called in to check the tower logs now, they would freak out and there was no way she'd put them in that mental state going into a mission. Nothing in her place had been touched, Eddie hadn't seen the guy even get in, and there was a plausible cover story. She'd check in the morning from the tower itself. If there was a reason to worry, Jane would let her stay with her until The Boys came home. As for the overnight, Geno and his boys had watch.

She got a text around one that everyone had returned home safe and sound and smiled as she snuggled back into the covers. It wasn't that she didn't sleep when they were off doing whatever they needed to do, it was just that she slept far more soundly knowing that they were alive and breathing. Bonus points if there were no injuries involved at all.

Frecks contented purr as he settled back against her told her that he concurred.


	2. Chapter 2

Her alarm went off far earlier than it had any right to the following morning. She knew complaining wouldn't make any difference and, besides, Freckles was now wide awake and meowing for food anyway. She fed him and started a pot of coffee before going to wash up and get ready for the day. It still confused her that her new toaster didn't set fire to anything and that she could do something like make herself eggs while it cooked instead of watching for sparks, but she figured there were worse things to worry about in life and let it be for now.

It was mornings like this that gave her perspective, really. So few mornings now didn't involve The Boys in some way, and spending the time by herself, getting ready without tripping over them or having them insist she eat something healthy versus her usual standbys, reminded her of how much their lives had intertwined in such a short time. Yeah, she knew that was standard with soulmates, but it didn't make it any less weird.

One thing she had most definitely gotten used to was the near constant offer of a ride into work. Either they themselves would come around (or wake up beside her), or they would send a car for her. She knew she could call a cab or even call the motor pool and be picked up right at her doorstep and delivered to the main entrance, but there was something intrinsically New York about taking public transportation. It was crowded and smelly and people may or may not try to pick her pocket, but it also kept her grounded, kept her from being quite as accustomed to privilege. She had even dragged both Bucky and Steve along more than once. They had hovered and glared and made faces, but seemed to understand her reasoning and maybe even respect it a little.

Either that, or they faked it well. 

Her Docs made the coolest thudding noise across the fancy marble tile of the front foyer of the tower and Greg from Security just smiled indulgently at her while he keyed up an elevator for her to ride to the restricted levels. She thought she caught him key another button as well, and was in no way disappointed to find Steve standing just outside of the lab with a giant cup of caffeinated goodness for her.

"Bucky will be around for lunch. Stark dragged him off to his lab when we got back and neither one of them have come up for air yet," he said after kissing her cheek in greeting. "Also, it is entirely possible your boss is in a mood - fair warning."

"Thor hit the Rainbow Bridge of Avoidance?" she guessed.

Steve gestured for her to follow him into the lab as he nodded. "He took some of the tech we found back to Asgard with him," he said by way of explanation.

"Meaning it probably came from one of the 'Heims," she concluded for him. She paused and sipped her wonderfully sweet concoction before she mused, "Did you ever wonder why like all of the nine realms end with -heim except Midgard and Asgard? Well, I mean, there's Nidavellir too but whatever, all data sets have an outlier. Like, who came up with this naming scheme and did they get bored or something?"

"I can honestly say I have not," he laughed. He pulled out her chair for her as though that was a thing people still did and even offered out his hand for her bag and coat.

"But you will now," she said, pointing a finger in his direction with a wink. She tossed her bag on her desk and her coat over the back of her chair, mainly because it was adorable the way his brow would crease when he'd try to grab the offending object before she could sit on it. As expected, he hung it neatly on a rack off to the side that she knew was not part of the original lab setup. The rack itself was draped with numerous scarves from her usually starting the day with one neatly tied around her neck to cover her mark, and then getting tired of the constricting feeling somewhere around noon or so. Every week or so she would remember to take them home, usually around the time when she found the corresponding hook in her closet empty.

Finished, he asked, "What can we do to make Doctor Foster..."

"Less mopey?"

"Not the phrasing I would use, but it'll work," he shrugged in agreement.

"Short of bringing Big and Blond back, not much," she replied. She spun lazily in her chair as she thought about it. "Soul matches, apart, literal galaxies apart, yadda. I'll keep her distracted today and maybe get her drunk off her ass tonight since that always cheers her up. Can we move the pizza and bad movie to tomorrow night instead? Maybe invite her if there's no word from the big guy yet?"

"We'll make a night of it," he agreed. "Let me see if Stark will let us use that theater room of his and we can invite the rest of the team too. It can be a Family Night."

"You're such a dork," she said without heat. She also didn't object and knew he noticed. Boy Time was good and plenty, but Girl Time with Janie was a necessity in its own right. With Thor gone, getting her in a good mood right away would hold the worst of it off for longer and by then they might have an actual ETA. Mr. God-Prince had learned since his last foray into disappearing for years at a time that a certain someone got tetchy when he did things like that. He also learned said person had friends that sided with her over him and had the whole contrite thing down pat. There were odes. And occasionally stuffed animals of mythical origin.

Over the course of the next few hours, she learned a little bit more about just what had happened the night before. Thing One and Thing Two tended to be vague when talking about missions, less to keep her in the dark and more to stop her from worrying. Yes, national and occasionally intergalactic security was also involved, but whatever. 

Thor could care less about playing that game and knew knowledge calmed Jane down. As such, he tended to be as frank as he could with her, within reason of course. A few carefully worded questions and Darcy would either know as much as Janie, or would get the gist of what had actually happened enough to no longer feel the need to pry for more. Added bonus that it let her friend vent and feel far better about whatever was bothering her.

This time out, there were rumors of black market tech that may or may not be alien in origin. There was a limited window to stop the sale to some unsundries, and the team had gone for it. Thor had wanted the alien stuff out of the hands of the imbecile earthlings and Stark had wanted the other stuff to figure out how they probably augmented it with know-how they got from the alien crap. To be fair, one such piece had destroyed a great deal of one of his suits, so he did have a legitimate reason for caring.

"So is this where I interrupt your subtle interrogation and break a few laws of my own just telling you my side of the story?" James asked when he deposited a couple of sandwiches and bags of chips beside them.

"Hit me, Buckmeister B," she replied, already unwrapping her hoagie.

He paused and gave her a look. She wasn't sure if it was from the nickname that she was fairly certain she had used before, or at the idiom and phrasing. Jane held up a hand though, and explained, "She means tell us your tale of woe."

James nodded a little uncertainly, but went with it for now. He pulled up a chair and dug into his own meal as he tattled, "Tech was all over the board, but Thor took anything that glowed. They aimed something of the more domestic sort at me, but Stark got there first. It screwed with his suit, so we needed to backtrack it to see if it would have taken out the arm. Might actually owe the guy, and that'd be terrible."

"How dare he save you from getting blowed up," Darcy agreed dryly.

"Disable, not destroy," he corrected. He stole a chip for her infraction. "Figured it was worth losing some sleep if it was enough to get him all worked up."

"With Tony that was probably better than a thank you," Jane mused, and the others had to agree.

Jane was in a better mood after talking, and after finding out Thor's running away meant someone she considered in the realm of friendship might not get hurt next time out. She went back to her numbers and got lost in them soon enough, leaving Darcy to sort through the various emails and other whatnots that the now world-acclaimed astrophysicist got on a daily basis.

Around four, another call to assemble came through. Bucky pointblank told her that they found the potential buyer while Steve frowned and pretended he wasn't going to tell her the same thing. They both wished her good drinking and reminded her that she could use their place to crash with or without them there should she be too drunk to go back to her studio. They did that a lot lately, really. Tried to find reasons why she should be at their place versus at hers. Bought a damned dresser for her to put things in should she want to stay overnight. Ignored the fact that she had a furry friend to take care of, even if he truly could survive the extra few hours without food before they checked on him the next day.

She rolled her eyes and said thanks and fully planned on ignoring the offer. She had managed to get home from dive bars in the middle of nowhere while barely being able to stand, getting back from the tower was nothing. At least here she knew where she was starting from.

It was nearly an hour later, just about time to wrap things up and debate margaritas versus straight up shots, that a crash caught her attention. Well, a crash followed by a startled yelp followed by some truly creative cursing. Shards of something that may have once been a glass bottle were scattered over the countertop and floor and Jane's hand was clutched in the bottom of her t-shirt, a shirt that was rapidly staining red.

"What did you do?" Darcy asked, equal parts concerned and wary. They had a no glass for consumables in the labs rule for a reason. Said reason was currently bleeding into discount cotton.

"There was soda, I reached, I missed, it fell," Jane said succinctly . Darcy looked at the pieces on the floor to confirm that, yes, they appeared to be the remains of nothing more than sugary goodness. Janie's favorite kind even. Someone must have known she was having a sucky day and tried to make it better. Said someone was possibly currently in a Quinjet headed towards a mission she totally knew nothing about.

The little cleaner robots were already scurrying towards the mess so she didn't need to worry about that. Instead, she jerked a thumb towards the door and offered, "Medical?"

Two hours, six tiny stitches, and a lot of gauze later, and Jane was allowed to leave Medical for her suite in the tower. Darcy escorted her the whole way and wondered if Stark had invented something to get blood stains out of cheap fabric yet. Given the habits and hobbies of the tower's residents, there was a fair chance he had or would be doing so shortly.

Jane flopped down dramatically on her couch and pouted. There wasn't much Darcy could do at that point other than to say, "Sucky end to a sucky day. Tequila?"

Jane pondered that for a moment before she relented, "Maybe only a shot? I think I'm too tired to handle much more." Darcy made a mental note to pull the logs from the night before as her bestie had been dragging long before the mummification of her hand. There was also the pain meds that she had been given, but they were low key and not actually narcotic in nature. No one had actually verbally told them or handed them any pamphlets stating liquor was a no-go, so they could choose to ignore the obvious and make the most of it. 

Darcy pulled out two glasses and the bottle, opening it with ease. She poured a fair deal more than a jigger into each and offered one of the two to her friend. "To sucky days?"

"May they be met with better tomorrows," Jane agreed, a rough quotation of some fancy Asgardian toast she had the privilege of hearing more than once.

Darcy tucked away both the bottle and Jane not long after that, one in a cupboard and the other in bed. She pulled the blankets up and over her shoulder and promised, "See you in the morning? Better tomorrows and all that jazz?"

"We can hope," Jane agreed with a yawn. 

It was now nearing eight and Darcy was more than a little hungry. She knew the standing offer of The Boys' place included their fully stocked kitchen, but she didn't really feel like taking the time to cook. The alcohol gave her a low burn in the bottom of her stomach, not enough to make her even tipsy, but enough for her to want the nachos and other fillers that usually accompanied a night with a bottle of Mr. Cuervo. 

Sit down restaurants were out because she didn't like the waste of time nor to sit by herself in such places, but the coffee shop on the first floor was still open because to close such a thing at any hour was sacrilege to a Stark despite the fancy machines dotting every floor. She grabbed one of their wraps and a soda and downed half of each on the trip back to her place, figuring food crumbs were the least of things to end up on the floor of the subway.

She waved hello to Danny and Geno when she got to her place, and then called it a night far earlier than she normally would have. She wasn't dumb enough to wander out after drinking even the little that she had, and there was nothing good on any of the channels. With her Boys gone for the foreseeable future, she decided maybe it was time to catch up on some sleep and maybe actually be prepared for whatever breakthrough Jane would inevitably have after being forced to stay in place for a few hours.

The next day was pretty much a rewind/repeat of the day before, save for not having anyone to get her coffee for her. That was fine though, because she could order an extra-large instead of a large and be well and truly wired for the day instead.

As expected, Jane had a new and undoubtedly brilliant idea. Also as expected, Jane had no one but Darcy to hold her back and make sure she did little things like eat lunch and close up shop at the end of the day. The lab stayed gloriously glass-free, but it took a lot of convincing and a tablet with the pending equations on it to get Jane back to her place and maybe even close her eyes sometime that night. The latter part of that slightly on the more likely side since Darcy limited the access of the tablet and locked down the lab herself as soon as Jane crossed the threshold.

This time, she opted for a hoagie instead of a wrap on the way home. Her Boys were still out and covert ops oddly meant no texting with a timeframe. She wasn't about to cook a fancy meal for herself when she could indulge in her favorite pastime of fast food, so she took the opportunity as presented.

She shoved the second half of the hoagie into her bag for the walk home to free up a hand for her new and improved mini-taser that was not precisely legal, and to sip on the soda she still held in the other. It was standard procedure now, something she would have done on her own but was damn near quizzed on by The Boys before they'd let her do what she had been doing by herself before.

She was about a block from home when something just felt off. Maybe it was the trio of guys outside the building that were so not Geno's boys. Maybe it was the idiot that thought she didn't see him following her. Maybe she was just on high alert in general and was imagining things. Whatever it was, it made her subtly crank up the setting on Mini Lightning and prepare for the worst.

She passed the three without incident and relaxed at the ridiculousness of it all. They may not be Geno's boys, but they might be there to meet with Geno's boys - he was a businessman of sorts after all. It was probably just the team getting called out on two missions in two days mixed with Janie's mood mixed with Janie getting injured that had her hackles up. She was so used to things being a certain sort of status quo that, when they were not, her subconscious felt that evil must be afoot. Stupid, really. For all she knew, the guy "shadowing" her was one of Stark's security sent on a cushy mission to watch a wayward intern, or it was that new 'stand of Evie's just happening to match her timeline.

As she reached the short set of crumbling cement steps that led to the door, she realized that she really should have trusted her first instincts. The men closed around her, trapping her against steel and glass with nowhere to run. Her keys were still in her bag, but there was no way she was about to let go of her taser, so she chucked her drink at the nearest one, made a blind grab for her Mickey Mouse keychain, and hoped for the best.

The door swung open behind her though, and Geno's rough voice was like Adele herself when he grunted, "Run! We've got this!"

Eddie bodily grabbed her and pulled her the rest of the way into the vestibule. He and at least four others formed a wall while Geno tried to help her to the elevator. There was no gun tucked into his waistband as a farce of a pretense this time, instead it was out and open for all to see, pretenses be damned. 

Shots were fired. Shots ricocheted around the tiny area. Shots totally hit the controls for the ancient piece of machinery that would have got her to her floor faster. Geno tugged her towards the stairs instead and she started taking them two at a time, right up until a man who could have been wearing actual tactical gear for as obvious as he was tried to block the way. She tased the fuck out of him and kept going, letting Geno chuckle as he stepped over the still twitching body.

Unfortunately, Tac Man was not alone. There was another idiot at the entrance to her floor, and yet another in the hallway. Geno shot the first and yelled at Danny to get the second. The door to his apartment opened and Danny and several others came toting out, but not before Mr. Second winged Geno something awful. Darcy saw him go down and saw him clutch what she hoped was only his arm, not that any gunshot wound was a thing to take lightly, and heard him curse in ways his grandma would have his hide for.

Danny nailed the bad guy someplace possibly vital and Darcy had a brief moment of thinking the worst of it was over. That was, of course, when a door opened and more bad guys came spewing out into the hallway. The saddest part was that it was her own doorway. 

So much for Stark's fancy lock.

Geno's boys tried their best, but it came down to armed street thugs versus trained operatives in a small contained space. Guns were not the best weapons of choice, especially when they were tossed away with ease. Hand to hand was going to have an obvious winner, but Darcy was self-serving enough to try to sneak to safety while everyone else was distracted.

The stairs behind her were out, her own damned apartment was out, Geno's place would have been a possibility had that not been the current staging ground for whatever the hell was going on, which left the back stairs that led down into the dirty gross alley of freedom. Maybe. It was entirely possible that they had guys there too. Likely, really possible. But maybe if she got to the steps, she could go up instead of down and find a hiding spot with one of the wives, at least long enough to make a call.

She gripped her bag closer and prepared to make a run for it. She got all of about five steps before one of the goons Danny had actually managed to knock down grabbed her foot and dragged her down with him. She hit the aged carpet with bruising force and it took her longer than it should to catch her breath. She had kept hold of her taser though and nailed the guy in retaliation, thankfully after he had momentarily let go of her due to precise application of her reinforced Docs to his face. 

A kick to her hand from another asshole knocked her only real weapon away, as well as possibly dislocated a finger or three. She breathed through it the best she could and tried to grab for the phone that was buried at the bottom of her bag underneath a truly smushed hoagie. The guy wrestled her arms behind her back before she got the chance to do anything other than blindly try to set off the emergency signal. She doubted that worked as much as she doubted she was going to get out of anything unscathed because luck truly and utterly was not on her side.

"Let her go!" called Danny. Sweet seventeen year old Danny. Who was shot in the leg before her very eyes. She watched him fall to the ground in slow motion, watched him hit the floor barely two yards away from her, gun still in hand enough to fire off a shot at at least one more baddie.

"Aim for the lock!" she told him, fruitlessly trying to fight the grip on her arms.

He looked at her like she was an idiot. "It's already open, D," he shouted back, voice a little higher pitched in his panic and pain.

"Trust me on this one," she replied. She kicked out and hopefully hit somewhere sensitive on the goon behind her and really hoped she was not lying. They had gotten past the Stark lock without setting it off, probably due to the tiny metal box hanging off of it. Somehow she doubted that sucker could avoid interrupting the signal with a bullet in it.

Danny fired. As did Georgie, Davie, and, bless him, possibly Geno himself given the trajectory of a bullet that came from behind her. Someone hit it and she felt the reassuring vibration of her phone in her bag against her leg as the alert was sent even as honest to fuck grating slid down into place in front of her door. She had no idea when they put that in, was on the wrong side of it, but took comfort in the fact whatever idiots still hid in her apartment were now locked in until such time someone on the side of good came to beat the shit out of them.

"Sorry, D," Danny mouthed before his gun was knocked away from him and he shook with the impact of another shot. It wasn't his head though, so she told herself that he was fine, that he would be fine, that he'd be okay, even as something sharp impacted against her own skin, a pinprick that spread a heady warmth throughout her and made her body go limp and heavy far faster than it had any right to. 

She felt herself being picked up, bodily hauled to a place she instinctively knew was probably not a vacation home, unable to fight back in the slightest. Right before she gave in to the darkness that quickly edged against her vision, she spared a thought to hope Frecks clawed the ever-loving shit out of anyone who had gotten near him.

* * *

She awoke to find the darkness still remained. It was the only thing familiar, really. Her head felt like cotton, her mouth tasted like a moldy version of it, and she had the overwhelming desire to hurl. That last part could have been from either the drugs they had given her or the fact she was rocking back and forth at severe and uneven intervals. Her hands were bound as were her ankles, and she could feel the latter due to a distinct lack of Docs. Given that her Docs held a tiny little blade as a gift from a certain super soldier assassin of a soulmate, she was doubly sad. Not that it probably could have cut through the weird feeling material, but it would have been reassuring if nothing else.

The flooring beneath her was uneven in an odd way. She scraped her toes across it and found it roughly level but with bumps and bubbles of hardness that caught against the cotton of her socks. It was also rather cool, which was also odd considering the clammy not-quite-warmth of the air around her. The echoing thuds and scratches mixed with that told her she was likely in a metal room or container of some sort, which was five shades short of awesome.

She found that, though bound, she wasn't actually tied down to anything, so she tried to stand. Well, first she tugged two fingers back into place the best she could and sent up a silent bit of thanks that her hands were in front of her and not behind her while cursing profusely. A few false starts and bruised knees later, and she got her feet under her, only to discover that whatever she was in was not actually Darcy-sized when she whacked her head against a particularly low ceiling. 

That made her lose her balance again, not that she had much with the constant rocking, and she fell right back down onto her ass.

She sighed. She cursed. She did what she should have done to start with and carefully tried to feel out the boundaries of her current prison, especially since she could actually use her hands somewhat. By her extremely rough estimate, the container was just shy of two Darcys in length, three-fourths of a Darcy wide, and roughly three-fourths again in height. 

And it was a container. That part she was fairly certain of. Metal. Slightly rusty. And damn near airtight. It was stuffy and stifling and really not helping a head that still felt like utter and complete crap.

Unfortunately, it was pretty much an empty container as well. Her bag had gone the way of her boots, her jacket, and the scarf she had actually remembered to take home meaning she had far less tools to work with. She was slightly sad that this was her life now, to analyze what could be used for what in truly shitty situations. She would have blamed her soulmates for drilling that into her head, but it was already kind of there ever since she met Jane. 

The container jerked to a halt and she didn't know whether to be happy for the lack of rolly-polly, or worried about what came next. The constant whirring background noise finally stopped as well, so at least there was that. It was replaced for the briefest moments by a subtle hiss that was almost electronic in nature, but even that died away soon enough. The weird thing about that one is that she could have sworn it came from inside instead of outside of the container. Likely surveillance of some sort, so she hoped they enjoyed her show of rolling and scooting to get the useless measurements.

She brushed that off for now as she had more important things to worry about. Namely, there was the fact that one end of the container clanked and thudded and was clearly about to be opened. She scootched herself up as much as she could into a tiny ball at the far side figuring she could at least make it difficult on them if nothing else. Even though she braced herself for it, the sudden light after pitch darkness burned against her retinas. Retinas that were totally without the tiny protection of her glasses by the way because those clearly went the way of her boots and such. She was up to at least triple sadness at that point because those suckers were still relatively new.

"Get out," a decidedly male voice commanded. Slightly accented, but more of the Jersey type than international in nature. She couldn't actually see him, but assumed the roughly human shape of shadow against the light was the one speaking.

"Nah, I'm fine here," she quipped, as mildly as she could. 

Her voice was rough and her throat dry, but she figured they heard her when the same man demanded, "Now!"

She looked at him as much as she could from her little metal fort of suckitude sans glasses and tried to keep her face as expressionless as possible. They already knew she was terrified, but there was no need to announce it to the world. As her vision cleared a bit, she could make out a suit jacket and an undercut and decided her life had become a cliche.

The guy nodded to another one who even had the audacity to smile. He looked vaguely familiar, as did the contraption he held in his hand. He pushed a button to confirm that, yes, it was Little Lightning, and then held it against the side of the container. His smile grew; hers did not.

She was quickly reminded that metal was a conductor, or at least this metal was, as arcs of voltage came rolling at her. It wasn't full strength, but it was enough to hurt like hell until he pulled it away again. It also confirmed that the weird material around her hands and ankles were also likely metal in nature, or at least lined with it, as those burned as much as any place on her that had actual contact with her stupid Box of Doom. Her ass, feet, and shoulder blades were thoroughly singed.

Said Box of Doom was still slightly suspended in the air, or so it seemed. Yet another thug - and she was going to have to start giving them names soon - did what the others could have done to start with and simply elevated the back, making her slide just that tiny bit closer to the front to allow the first ones to grab her and pull her out the rest of the way.

"Hi," she said as brightly as she could manage.

She was promptly rewarded with a slap across the face. At least they had the decency to wear gloves; she would be hated to find another soulmate and bear that sort of mark front and center. Not that she thought she'd have another one out there, but given that the ones she did have already marked her in less than standard ways she had to admit weirder things could happen. Sucky things, but weird and valid.

When she saw just where she had landed, she had a feeling things were about to suck even more. Semi-abandoned warehouse undoubtedly in the middle of nowhere? Check. Thugs left, right, and center? Check. Absolutely nothing that screamed long term and sensitive care? Check.

It wasn't until they bodily pushed her away from her coffin away from home that she realized just how bad things had the potential be. In the corner of the room, highlighted neatly with freaky lights and the slant of some strange flickering blue thing, was a chair. Not just any chair, but the one from the file she so totally was never supposed to see. It was Bucky's chair, the mind wiping one complete with manacles and freaky head-zapping attachment.

"Something tells me you don't want me for my connection to the Rainbow Bridge of Delights," she guessed.

Thug One chuckled in a truly non-amusing way. "Dr. Foster managed to avoid our invitation this time but, rest assured, we'll know where to find her when we turn to our next project," he agreed. Thankfully, he had Bad Guy Syndrome and the need to pontificate, at least enough to continue, "No, for now we have are sight set on a different prize all together. You are here due to your connection to a certain Asset of ours." 

She pretended to think about it for a moment before she shook her head. Even though she had heard the implied capitalization and knew full well what they meant, she said, "Sorry, don't know anything about any assets. They keep me away from the accounting."

This time, she was rewarded with a punch. Given that she had nothing supporting her and her feet were bound too close together to really give her a lot of balance, not to mention that her left leg was totally asleep and the world itself still seemed to rock back and forth as her equilibrium slowly returned, her ass hit the concrete floor the moment she doubled over from the force of it. Still singed, and now both cold and bruised.

Thug One looked less than impressed with her which, to be fair, was warranted. She wasn't exactly making a good showing of it and really had no idea how to. This was her first kidnapping by murderous minions, and she had never been given a handbook on how to prepare beyond the whole "push the panic button and help will arrive shortly" that had been drilled into her head upon arrival at the tower.

He motioned to someone behind her who hauled her to her feet. Two someones, really, as she now had meaty fist attached to each arm holding her in place. His Thugginess reached out and traced the small red star along her pulse point and smirked when she tried to flinch away. "Did you really think no one would know? That no one in this day and age would film a dramatic rescue and upload it to where others could find it? To see our Asset find his match..." He sighed as if caught up in the moment and grasped at his chest like he actually had a heart beneath his cheap suit before he finished, "I was touched, really."

"That's one word for it," Darcy muttered in agreement. Louder, she said, "Sorry, but I'm matched to one James Buckinator Barnes, not some random piece of property. I'm sure it's a hard concept to grasp though, what with your own match likely being made of silicone and possibly hot air, much like you."

Yeah, she deserved that one. Didn't make it hurt any less though.

"The Asset has shaped both the past and the future as you know it, and he will again," Thug One promised her after straightening his jacket with a sharp tug. "We didn't think one like him would have a match, not one still alive, but the fortuitous timing? You will help bring him back to us, back to where he belongs. Your care and welfare will be dependent upon his own, just like any true match should be. You should smile, Ms. Lewis, as you have quite the important role to play. Of course, it will be up to you to decide whether or not you live to see the future you will help create. What do you say?"

"I say that I'd really like to spit in your face but my mouth is too damned dry from the drugs you gave me," she retorted. She paused and cocked her head to the side, considering. "No, wait, maybe not," she amended right before she managed to hit him right on the cheek. If she was going to die, and she was fairly certain she was because there would be no need to keep her alive after they got their paws on James, she was damned well going to earn it.

Of course he hit her right back in the corresponding area of her own face, and it wasn't just with saliva. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket and motioned to the guys that held her. "Put her somewhere uncomfortable. I need to send a message and then we shouldn't have to wait long."

They dragged her across the floor, the Hello Kitty socks on her feet doing little to provide traction enough to even try to stop them. She decided to do what she did best then, and curse up a storm. This of course meant that she was in no way surprised when the order was given to gag her. She just wished she had managed to finish her latest rant before they did so. It was quite creative, really, and she was fairly certain that she was being filmed for more than just posterity by the guy in the corner.

They didn't just gag her of course, though at least the fabric seemed to sop up the blood from her split lip. The peons weren't exactly handsy but they did touch her far more than she felt was necessary when they looped the ties on her wrists up and over a hook that hung down from the ceiling and they gave her a solid kick or two for posterity. Her feet could touch the floor, at least they could once she got her balance back, but she knew that her back was going to get really uncomfortable really quickly if she needed to stand that way for too long. Also, the concrete was pretty flipping freezing and that wasn't even accounting for the breeze that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

It turned out her back was the least of her worries. As expected, she had been filmed. As she hadn't fully expected, they continued to film her. Thug One recited some threat or another into the recording device and decided he needed to make a show of it. He got a little closer than polite society strictly allowed, turned her face this way and that like he was showing off chattel to be sold. After that, he violated every social protocol ever and removed the glove from his right hand to boldly trace her soul mark with his finger.

That little end addition made her damn near want to hurl. She took refuge in the fact that when The Boys found her, and they damned well better, that man would pay in new and imaginative ways. Maybe James would let her personally chop off that finger. He was a giver like that.

The camera finally clicked off and he stopped his posturing to outright threaten her. "Your little stunt with the door moved up our timeline," he admitted. His bare hand trailed across her skin and it was just plain gross. He slapped the grimace off of her face and continued, "The Asset was undoubtedly informed and will likely be on his way. We had hoped to keep him occupied for longer while we prepared you. Now, we'll just have to make the most of the time we've got."

"We going to wipe her, boss?" one of the minions asked. He jerked his thumb back to the chair just in case she couldn't figure out what he meant. He still held her taser, so she decided to call him Mr. Zappy. 

"That was the original plan," Thug One admitted. He turned to her, oozing smarm and pride at what he undoubtedly thought was an awesome idea. "Wipe you, condition you, maybe test to see if any of the serum's gifts bleed over to soulmates as clearly agility and strength do not. The conditioning wouldn't be refined, not in this timeline, but it would be enough for you to fear him, to remember the atrocities he committed against you and everyone you love, to fight him and despise him. We would have pit you against him, had him tear you apart until you were put out of your misery, either by him or one of us in front of him." 

That actually horrified her on some level, though possibly not the one he thought. She wasn't nearly full of herself enough to think she played that important of a role in Bucky's or anyone else's life. No, instead James would take it personally, and not in a "get me some revenge" sort of way. He knew what it was like to be wiped, to have his very self erased and replaced, and had told her after a rather horrific flashback episode that he would never wish that on anyone. He would see it as a failure that he had allowed such a thing to happen to anyone at all, not just to her. Even if he managed to get her back through whatever miraculous means his buddies might have at their disposal, he would still blame himself, still have that crumb of doubt of self-worth. 

The guy might be a brilliant tactician and all warrior-like, but he also took everything far more personally than he ever let on and she knew it.

It wouldn't just be him though, he'd drag Steve along for the ride whether he actively wanted to or not. He'd be busy blaming himself and wouldn't notice Steve blaming himself for letting him go down that particular rabbit hole until they were both in too deep. If they recovered enough to blow this place and every asshole in it to high heaven, their own stubborn self-pitying tendencies would still stop them from ever truly getting past it. Neither would listen to each other - or reason - and a rift would grow out of their stupidity. She'd could be physically dead and at least be done with her suffering but her Boys would live on without the true strength of their bond and never be whole again because talking was way too scary of a prospect for two super soldiers when they could just brood instead.

Like hell she was going to let that happen.

Thugly chucked, undoubtedly figuring she was terrified by the thought of her own demise. "Maybe we could have even brought him back just enough for him to beg for the emptiness of being the Asset and have that loyalty embedded even deeper. Unfortunately, we do not have time for that now," he sighed in mock apology. "Assuming your brain is like your body and is without the enhancements of the serum, it would have needed several weaker treatments over the course of hours or days before we could even begin the process of planting false memories."

She made as much of a face as she could manage to let him know how sorry she was to have interrupted his grand plans. Mr. Zappy tased her for it, fully earning his name before he taunted, "Think that hurt, girl? That ain't nothing in comparison to the chair. Just because we won't wipe you doesn't mean we won't fry you the first chance we get."

Thug One took the taser out of his hands and set it aside on the table that held the recording equipment before he tsked at him. "We need her alive, at least until we get what we want. Her heart may give out if you keep that up, even on such a low setting."

Her heart, as it stood, currently hurt like fuck. As did the rest of her. Her limbs twitched with the aftershocks, her muscles ached from the sharp tension they had held for even such a short period, and she was fairly certain arrhythmia was the name of the game, or damn near close to it. Also, she really needed to pee because that was a sizable soda she had half-consumed back on the subway before she stumbled into this little nightmare.

The two men continued to talk now, and did that thing where they pretended they didn't know she was there even though their entire conversation was for her sake. They weighed the benefits of killing her outright as soon as James entered the building against making him watch her get wiped and programmed, even if the process wouldn't fully work. Zappy just wanted to fry her in front of him, and Thuggy wanted to wipe James just enough to know he was losing something when he shot her himself. Either that, or wipe him and have him shoot her and then give him back his memories just enough to to know what he had done but Zappy argued that took a finesse they might not have with the machine.

All in all, she didn't know which she was happier for: their apparent inability to concentrate long enough to come up with a feasible plan - the price of Hydra falling to the lackeys because it really didn't grow another head, at least not an intelligent one - or the fact absolutely no one seemed to know about Steve. They seemed utterly and completely convinced that their precious Asset would break free of the Avengers to take them on all by his lonesome, the tie of a mark match stronger than that of brothers in arms.

She just hoped she stayed alive long enough to have a ringside seat to their failure.

While she waited, she took the opportunity to examine just where the hell she was and to see if it could give her any clues on actual location beyond "crappy cliched warehouse." The walls were a weird combination of metal and cement and she idly wondered if they were reinforced beyond the obvious. It seemed odd to bring their favorite machine to a place without precautions. 

Above her was a maze of metal racks and gears with support beams tossed in every so often. She figured the mess was for transporting the containers like what she had been stuffed in, or something like them. It made a sort of sense and, when she tried to crane her neck behind her, she saw the tracks led to an opening to the outside world even if the sliding door below it was shut, probably for ease of loading and unloading. Her chain was attached to one of those setups, and she could now see that the container she had been in had a series of hooks at the top that totally supported her hypothesis. 

And Stark said her major wasn't in real science and therefore she wasn't allowed to use that word.

Pepper Actual Potts had smacked him for that.

Anyway, the place was littered with other containers. Most of them were less than shiny, but a few looked new and the bad guys kept checking on and pacing in front of those. Given that she overheard one complain that maybe it wasn't best to lure their precious Asset to a place full of potentially explosive tech, she had the feeling that she had found a stash of what the gang had been after on the mission she totally knew nothing about.

Well, less found and more dragged to kicking and screaming.

There were a couple different entryways, not counting where the cargo was zipped away to. Heavy metal doors large enough to let in a truck or three were cut into the wall in front of her. Smaller, person-sized doors were there as well, plus one to the left next to the metal staircase that wound up to the rafters where the mechanism for everything else probably was. She assumed there was also at least a single door behind her, but could not quite get the angle to see for herself.

This is where she faltered. Everyone talked about being aware of your surroundings, and she really was trying. She just didn't know what it meant. Were the doors escape routes? Entry points? Weak spots? Fortified spots? Useless in the big scheme of things because she had no idea if they were locked or could be opened or whatever on the off chance she could somehow free herself from being chained damned near in the center of a room filled with armed bad guys watching her every move?

So she sighed. And waited. And tried to block out how much her body was tensing up and how much her legs shook from more than just the electricity that had been sent through them and how much she just plain ached. She might have been free of PT, but her shoulder still complained loud and clear about its current predicament and her ankle commiserated. She concentrated on not thinking about physical discomfort and thought up dramatic rescues instead, interspersed of course with hoping someone actually talked sense into her Boys and were not going to let them run half-cocked into such an obvious trap. She loved them dearly, but sometimes they just didn't think things through.

Huh. There was an interesting thought. She loved them. Like really actually loved them. Like beyond the draw of a soul match, more than just that extra tug that made her want to be around them.

Well, shit. Now she was going to have to stay alive long enough to tell them she finally came to that little realization. She wondered if they had reached it on their own yet, or just had that obligational tug. She wondered if they ever would. They seemed to like her well enough, and she swore she heard Steve whisper the words more than once when he thought she was asleep, but was never quite sure. When she got out of here, she'd have to look into that. 

When, not if. Because she totally was going to make it. James would come, Steve would follow unless massively incapacitated, and the two of them could take down the Hydra flunkies that had thought this whole scene up.

And the celebratory sex would be awesome.

She didn't quite know if the Avengers themselves would play a role in the rescue, kind of figured they wouldn't given that she was not a high-profile target, but hoped they would at least let The Boys have a day or so of intense not-so-snuggly cuddles before they called everyone back to their real jobs.

"Our source confirms the Asset has cleared the tower," Lackey Number Whatever announced. He swiped a thumb across the screen of his phone and smiled with the same smugness she was really beginning to hate. "Tower is in lockdown. He is following our instructions."

So that ruled out the Avengers; she just hoped it didn't rule out Rogers. At the very least, he would try to figure out what the hell was up with Barnes.

"We told him that we drugged you," Thug One explained. It was true, so she didn't see what the big deal was. At least not until he continued, "Alien tech altered to fit our needs. Every touch by someone who is not your match brings you closer to death. And we have quite a few men more than willing to touch you." He finished the last with a leer that was just plain ridiculous.

Since she had felt perfectly fine save for a standard gross-out when the asshole had touched her damned mark without gloves, she highly doubted he was serious. "Bullshit," she annunciated as clearly as she could around her gag.

He shrugged as though he didn't have a care in the world. "He doesn't know that."

"We may have sent him some videos supporting our claims," Zappy added, ever so helpful. "The girls were already dying from exposure to a little something that just happens to be in the box next to you, by the way. Just in case you were trying to count all the ways you can die here tonight - it's a lot."

Okay, he was just damn corny and annoying now and it was really beginning to piss her off. She would physically pay someone to gag him, either with the rag from her own mouth or, like, a fist or something, just to make him shut up. Steve's corniness was sweet in its own way; this guy's most definitely was not.

She began mentally composing letters to the various Avengers for what she'd like to see happen to the guy. Well, guys, plural. Stark was the obvious blow things up with his suit but to be fair he could make damn near anything explode if he tried hard enough. Natasha involved acrobatics and those gauntlets of hers put to good use in sensitive places. Barton was, of course, arrows to someplace vital. She wanted Bruce to Hulk out and pretend the thugs were Richards and see how far they could stretch, but she couldn't decide just what she wanted Steve's shield or James' James-ness to do to them. Instead, she started internally drafting something along the lines of, "Dear Thor, please feel free to house Mew-Mew in a thoracic cavity or two while lecturing the baddies on proper treatment of human beings."

Her letter was cut short at the sound of a series of rapid beeps followed by Lackey Number Four's announcement of, "Incoming. We have visual. He is alone."

She would have slumped her shoulders if she could. There was no way Jimmy Boy should fall for anything this obvious.

There was a thud and a crack and then one of the person-sized doors in front of her was kicked open with an extreme lack of gentleness. James strode in as confident as could be. In jeans and a fucking t-shirt without single gun in sight which meant he probably only had like seven other weapons on him, not including the arm. He scanned the room, ignoring the click of weapons of the bad guy type being targeted in his direction, until his gaze rested solidly on her. 

"Hiya, doll," he said lightly, but his eyes were anything but.

She wiggled a few swollen fingers in his direction in a sad approximation of a wave in response and hoped her own expression let him know how foolish she thought he was being.

He simply shrugged and pretended to listen to Thug One, who ranted about the apparent death of one of his operatives, thus explaining the commotion she heard right before the grand entrance. James finally looked away from her enough to glare in his direction. "You said I wasn't supposed to come armed. You didn't say I couldn't take out anyone along the way."

Now Darcy tried not to smile. The gag helped. It was less James arguing about semantics and more him reminding the idiots gathered what he was capable of, even unarmed. She did have to admit she didn't really like the odds though. While she was fairly certain the dozen against one ratio wouldn't really matter if the playing field was even, having the dozen armed with large automatic weapons and the one not did kinda tip the scales a bit, and not in the right direction.

As if to prove he saw no issue with the imbalance, he made a run for the biggest and baddest lackey closest to him. The guy's trachea shattered beneath a well-placed metal hand, but James did not get much farther than that. 

And it wasn't even Darcy's fault.

She had expected a gun or three aimed at her. She had expected the comic book level threats thrown in her direction. She had expected every possible reminder that she wasn't much more than a pawn in all of this. What she did not expect was Thug One to chuck a small circular device at James. She did not expect said device to lock on to his prosthetic arm. She sure as hell did not expect him to freeze mid-swing before slowly sinking to his knees, where he remained preternaturally still, only his eyes showing any expression of any kind and even that seemed dulled and hazy.

"It's like an EMP, but far more localized," Thug One explained. He ventured closer now, clearly confident the threat was gone. "You may have recognized it from the prototype that put Iron Man out of commission. We, of course, have adapted it to your cyborg tendencies. As well as freezing the arm, it should now release an extremely localized neurotoxic mist to work its way into your bloodstream via your lungs. We have the antidote, and may even use it before the toxin causes you the upmost agony." He tsked as though annoyed before he added, "This would have been so much easier for all involved if you hadn't broken through your old triggers."

James didn't speak. His muscles twitched subtly and he managed to open his mouth slightly, but no words came out. He did force his eyes back to Darcy, maybe in apology for all she knew. They locked onto her though, and did not move save for a handful of painful looking blinks. She wished she knew Morse Code because the whole gag versus paralysis was putting a major damper on them actually communicating anything other than a general feeling of the less than awesomeness of their current situation.

"Don't worry about that match of yours, we have plans for her," Thug One assured him, earning another twitch. His Thugliness raised a hand and gestured for his lackeys to approach. "Keep an eye on him. There's a chance the serum will fight the toxin and I need to prepare."

The lackeys inched closer, close enough to block part of her view, guns so very much at the ready. That was okay though as apparently her view was changing.

Sir Thuginheimer pushed some buttons on an elaborate control panel and the Chair of Less-Than-Awesomeness began to power back to life. The lights flickered above her and that answered why he hadn't set the sucker up earlier as apparently it was an incredible draw on the power supply. It hummed and crackled, or at least she thought it did since she was too distracted by the creak of the chain she was attached to being retracted up towards the ceiling. The full weight of her body on her already tired arms made her bite back a scream because she was not about to give them assholes the pleasure of hearing her if she could help it. Instead, she tried to balance herself on the tips of her toes, calf muscles stretching to their fullest until there was simply nowhere left to reach but air.

"She's going to have a front row seat to your return," the guy who really needed to shut up gloated. "She's going to watch us take you apart piece by piece and rebuild you back to your true purpose."

Mr. Zappy felt the need to chime in now because that was apparently his thing. "Got any guesses who our Asset's first mission will be? Because I've got a few."

James held her gaze throughout it all. It had to be difficult, the fight against being frozen in place, keeping even that much control when everything else was toast, but he managed it. He fought to try to bring her even that tiny bit of comfort in a world that was about to be flooded with suck.

Or possibly flooded with something else.

There was a clang and a whoosh and then there was a spinning bit of American legend swooping through the area, infamous shield bouncing off of lackeys like a shiny pinball. She caught only the barest glimpse of Steve before he was on the move again, but it was enough. Clearly he had the common sense to realize a "soulmates only" invitation included himself, for which she was extremely grateful. 

"Get her down!" a voice called. It was not Steve's and it took her a painfully long time to realize it was James'. That James was in motion. That James was taking down baddie after baddie like they were made of cardboard. That James had been a complete and utter ass and had been faking all along, possibly to stall for backup, especially considering his chiding comments of taking too long. Unfortunately, a dozen had been an extremely poor estimate on her part as clearly others had been hiding outside of her purview. They now came rushing back into the game and that really wasn't fair at all. 

There were bullets and there were ricochets and there appeared to be an extra body on the floor below her. A blur of black topped with red rushed James and pulled off the device that really didn't seem to do much at all, the semi-familiar clipped tones of Natasha confirming "the countermeasures" worked for whatever that meant. She assumed it had to do with the fact James was alive and kicking ass and not frozen into place to endure death via alien toxin but, frankly, she figured she would work that out later as there were currently other things to worry about.

The chain had fully retracted now, but that clearly wasn't dramatic enough. After a long pause, the metal and gears started to clank and move again, and take her along with them. While a moving target was better than a sitting duck, she would have kind of liked to know where she was headed and she kind of also would have liked it if her Boys knew too so that they wouldn't aim in ways that sent the shield careening less than a foot past her damn leg.

She eyed her options and figured she was on a fixed track so there really weren't that many places she could go. She also figured she'd rather like control of the few options she had so that she didn't bang against the back wall and tear herself in half when the chain slid through the tiny opening and the door inevitably remained shut. After having to tuck herself up to avoid having her legs slammed against a crossbeam, she had a plan. It might be a bad plan, but it was better than no plan at all.

She readied herself, willed what was left of her strength to where it was needed to make her move. The next beam approached, and then the damned mechanism started to curve around and head towards Smushville. Poor and frankly stupid planning on the part of the baddies. Was she supposed to be a distraction? Was she only supposed to go up and some lackey fell asleep on the job? Whatever. If she could get her feet on top of the beam and uncurl enough to unhook her hands, she would be golden. Stuck on a beam over a story above where live ammo was currently being used, but otherwise at least in far less of a nickel-silver situation.

She twisted her hands as much as she could and gripped onto the tiny amount of slack from her bonds that she had on either side of the chunk of metal that served as a hook. Some skin was lost in the process, but it gave her a few more precious inches. She kicked her legs back a little in preparation and then started to swing forward, toes stretched out as much as she dared. Her socks slid slightly on the dust but she connected, just as a tinny voice announced, "Okay, Lewis, we've got you. I-"

She ignored that voice for now and pushed up with all her might. The tiny length of whatever the hell material it was slipped up and over the hook and she leaned as far as she dared to the right to let her tether clank by, toes digging in against the really grossly covered metal to give her some semblance of balance. Her hair was sweaty, frizzy, and hanging in knots around her face in ways that were not exactly helping with seeing enough to know just what the hell she had gotten herself into, but she would deal with all of that in a moment. Also, those socks were toast. There was no way they were getting clean after this.

She was free. Trapped on a fricken I-beam in a fricken warehouse in the middle of fricken nowhere, but free. She widened her stance as much as she could with the crap wrapped around her ankles, and just took a moment to breathe. Remembering what stood in the way of her catching her breath, she dragged the gag down over some seriously bruised lips, ignored the way her hair yanked against her scalp and knotted even further, and tried again.

That was, of course, when she heard the voice again.

"Damn it!" it said, and sounded remarkably like Barton. "Okay, I was going to ask you to do exactly that, but wait until you were closer so I could grab you. Give me a moment and I'll figure something out."

She squinted through the dust and darkness and tried really hard not to sneeze knowing that would so not be of the good. There was a flicker of movement near what she had assumed was the control room for the place and said flicker was roughly archer-sized. "How the hell can I hear you?" she asked, voice rough and throat insanely dry. Her matches were the ones that were all enhanced and everything, she most decidedly was not. It was pretty much the one thing the bad guys had actually gotten right.

"The pretty little earrings that were left on your dresser a few weeks back? Look like silver stars or some shit?" Clint said, and she had a vague recollection of them showing up. They were simple enough for everyday wear and small enough to fit into the second set of piercings, so she had taken to wearing them all the time. Sue her, she liked gifts of shiny. Bonus that they were a direct tie-in to her matches that pretty much no one would get. "Yeah, those were from Stark, not the Super Twins," he explained.

"You've been tracking me?" she guessed. She wanted to be annoyed, but the whole being thankful thing won out instead.

"Tracking and listening since you measured in units of Darcy," he confirmed. She winced, not having realized she had done so verbally. Hopefully she had provided entertainment, if nothing else. "As soon as they claimed bullshit on their own plan, the rest of us were in position. Stark and Rhodes are outside in case the dipshits try to escape," Barton explained.

"Awesome," she muttered, possibly with less enthusiasm than a full Avengers rescue warranted. She was tired, she was cold, her arms and everything else hurt, and she wasn't sure how much longer she could stand on a skinny piece of metal above the shitshow happening below her. "So this plan of yours?"

There was background noise from below and from the transmitter and from somewhere to her left. It was distracting. Or maybe that was just the continued violence from the ground level. From both the right and from the transmitter, she heard, "How much movement do you have? Can you scootch a little closer to my side? Your right?" She didn't even get a chance to contemplate an answer to that before she heard, "Shit, never mind. Scootch. Move. You need to get about a foot or two between your current position and-"

She heard him, really she did. She planned on doing as asked, really she did. She didn't get a chance to, because of course she didn't.

She had a vivid memory of how the chain she had been attached to wasn't the only chain hanging in the factory before an explicit example of such slammed into her left shoulder. It wasn't going that fast but it was heavy, and the weight of it was enough to throw her off her already tenuous balance. She careened forward and flailed as much as she could to latch on to anything and everything to prevent her from falling. She was on her last legs though, and she meant that literally, the muscles protesting voraciously before giving out all together in a spasm of fail. She lunged towards something vaguely solid and then there was a thin strip of metal that was sharp against her unprotected hands but it seemed to catch her. 

For all of about a ten count before it snapped free on one side and hung at a frightening angle to flap in the breeze.

There was some truly colorful cursing over her pretty little earrings, some of it in Russian. It ended with at least three voices asking why the hell Barton hadn't turned off the chain thingy when she disembarked and him defending that he was more concerned with getting her the fuck down at the time. She took only slight comfort in the fact that she wasn't the only one with a potty mouth.

On the up side, she was now only about a full story up. On the down side, Mr. Zappy seemed to be one of the few people not yet taken out because he probably hid under a table or something and he saw her now. He jumped and grabbed her around the bottom of her legs and she didn't even get the joy of kicking him in the nose before they both went crashing to the ground.

Everything hurt. Everything. She thought the whole fall that led to her meeting her soulmates sucked, but this was a new level of pain. Shoulders, legs, hands where they were sliced and bruised and fried, not to mention her head where it cracked against the ground and made her both see stars of a different type and want to hurl. She briefly wondered if she had managed to break her ribs with her own elbow before she remembered she should be using everything she had to get the hell out of there.

Zappy had loosened his hold when they landed, but tightened it the second she began to squirm away. She kicked out and discovered that the action hurt far more than it had any right to, but she tried again anyway when it got the asshole to at least flinch away slightly. He wrestled with her, and it spoke of how inept he truly was that she actually was able to make some progress in getting away from him, even in her current state.

They had landed close to the table that had been knocked over at some point which meant they were close to the chair and he felt the need to remind her that there was still a chance that he would see her fry. She grabbed for anything and everything that she could possibly use as a weapon against him, finding a piece of the very metal she had just been hanging from and jabbing it into his thigh with as much force as she could manage. It might not have been a lot, but she at least succeeded in making him bleed while she searched for something better.

"You little bitch!" he screamed. Well, wailed might be a more accurate descriptor. 

Given that they were still splayed out on the filthy ground, he reached over and slammed her head against it until she was dazed enough for him to get a better grip. She coughed on bile but didn't get the satisfaction of spitting it at him before he had her pulled to her feet, one hand wrapped around her middle and one holding a gun to her temple.

"Stop now or she dies," he threatened.

The commotion around her spun to a halt. Or maybe that was her spinning. The room felt like it was moving and her feet felt like they were sliding back and forth on the floor and it took her a moment to realize he had dragged her back another few steps. She forced herself to focus enough to see the James- and Steve-like shapes before her, hands up in a placating manner. Barely a yard or so behind her was the controls for the damned chair, and everyone else was blurred into counting as the scenery as far as she was concerned.

"I've got the shot," she heard Barton whisper through the transmitter. She wondered if Zappy could hear it, but he seemed distracted by James trying to talk him down. 

"Sorry," she whispered, the word more a mess of vowels than anything coherent.

"Not your fault, doll," came an echo of expected replies. Zappy, of course, assured her it was, and then went on in detail to what he was going to do to her and her Boys and a lot of other crap she really didn't want to listen to. The gun moved, only slightly but there was now a few inches between the barrel and her skull and he didn't seem to mind as much when she leaned further away, his grip around her middle secure and the weapon still clearly ready to be used.

She cleared her throat and really hoped they would forgive her for what she was about to do. She glanced behind her, hoped her perception wasn't nearly as bad as she suspected it was, and watched the gun wave somewhat erratically at some emphatic point or another. She jabbed him with her slightly less injured elbow to make his hand jerk even farther back and then tried her best to meet the matching sets of very worried blue eyes when she shouted as loud as she possibly could, "Heimdall, open the Bifrost!"

The worry turned to panic, but only for a split second before everything around her was enveloped in a rush of light and sensation. The Bifrost made her nauseous on the best of days, but she was fairly certain she lost what little was left of her last meal over one of the 'Heims. At the very least, she probably got some on Zappy, and she took her win where she could get it.

They landed with all the grace and style they could muster, which was not a lot. Zappy collapsed to land soundly on his ass and dragged her down with him, ironically cushioning her fall. Thankfully, the gun had not gone off yet and was now held lax in his hand while he took in the very fancy world around him with an expression on his face that was far more dumb than dumbfounded. She rolled off of him before she took a breath that sent a wave of ache through her ribs, and then took the opportunity not to enjoy the pretty but instead to make use of a small something she had grabbed from the ground when Zappy was using her head as a basketball. Little Lightning lit up like the solid Stark product it was, and she tased the shit out of the bastard, right in the balls.

"Your weapon of choice serves you well, Lady Darcy," a voice intoned from far, far above her. Heimdall sounded almost amused, a slight lilt to his usual serious manner. He took two giant steps forward, the gun skittering across the floor with what was probably only a nudge from him, and then towered over her with his blade at the ready.

"Thanks for the save, H," she replied before she flopped back down against the cool pseudo-marble. She hoped he could sense her gratitude given that she was barely able to outwardly express any.

Zappy made a twitchy lunge at her that made her question if Little Lightning lost some of its effectiveness when introduced to the energy of the Bifrost, but ended up with a very sharp piece of Asgardian steel through his wrist, pinning him into place for his troubles. "It is not standard for one such as yourself to initiate the travel, but I used my discretion to make an exception in this matter," he said with a dryness that she envied. 

Her heart was still pounding way too fast and she was still splayed out all over the gold and gilt and every single part of her hurt, but she managed to give him two thumbs up and promise him, "You rock, H. Like a giant rocking thing."

Heimdall's lips flicked up in the hint of a smile in response and he stood his ground despite the pounding of footsteps getting closer and closer. "Thor approaches."

Thor approached pretty damn quickly, a brunette that was probably Sif at his side. The ponytail and armor were roughly the right shape, but Darcy was seeing about twelve of everything at this point and the images were doing a sort of jaunty dance atop each other, so she really couldn't be certain. Her bestie's intergalactic mark match crouched beside her and ran gentle fingers from her temple down across the side of her face. She flinched away, but not before she saw the tips were covered in red.

"Hiya, big guy," she greeted him. Her words were slurred more than a little and she really hoped Allspeak translated the language of the concussed.

"What has transpired?" he demanded. The room echoed with the force of his words and it did pretty much the opposite of abate the pain that rattled around in her skull.

She wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to Heimdall, but felt the need to give her version of the events anyway, so she explained, "Hydra wannabes tried to use me to get to the Buckster. It didn't go as planned? But there's probably still a fight going on down there if you want to add a stanza or two to your epic tale."

"The battle has resumed in her absence," Heimdall confirmed. After a pause, he added, "Her matches are quite disturbed by this absence."

She snorted because that was likely an understatement. She then regretted the action because even that hurt. Thor helped raise her into a seated position when she tried and failed to achieve the task on her own. He seemed to be having some sort of silent conversation with his shield brother because, when she suggested they return before the party was over and they missed out on all the fun, he shook his head.

"You are in no state for battle," he told her, not unkindly. "You will remain here and I will see to the completion of the fight."

"But... my Boys, they..." she trailed off, not able to find words to express just how pissed they would be. Not that she was battle ready, or ready for anything other than unconsciousness, but her heart was drawn to them as much as they were undoubtedly drawn to her, and it was a nearly physical pain that ripped through her at the thought of their separation. She now had a far better idea of what Jane went through every time Thor left for home, and didn't like it one bit.

"Their anger would be far greater should you further injure yourself," Thor said reasonably. He rose after offering the lightest of touches to the top of her head. He turned to Sif and requested, "Please see to her injuries. Though her biology differs from ours, our healers should be able to assist."

He started towards the steps that would send him on his merry way, but paused when she called after him, "Hey, Big and Muscle-y? You see the chunks of metal that came up with us?" He nodded, or at least she thought he did, so she continued, "They're part of the thing that made James all Winter Soldier and tried to break a soul bond and everything. They were going to use it on him again. Me too, but, whatever. Could you maybe see that Mew-Mew gets acquainted with anything left of it?"

His smile was just the right side of feral when he replied, "It would be my pleasure."

Heimdall had to remove his sword from Zappy to make the Bifrost work, but Sif made a point of kicking the jerk away when she knelt down to snap the reinforced ties that still held Darcy's ankles and wrists like they were made of paper. Really thin paper that left behind some truly awful paper cuts in their wake.

"Have I ever mentioned how jealous I am of your awesomeness?" Darcy asked. She wanted to stretch out and flop some feeling back into her limbs after having been stuck in pretty much the same position for so long, but feared what her muscles would do to her in recompense.

Sif scooped her up as though she were a child. A really light child. She smiled down at her when she replied, "Once or twice. Your admiration is appreciated."

Darcy let the cool metal of the breastplate she was pressed up against soothe the tiniest bits of the massive headache she had. "Will that appreciation lessen if I accidentally hurl on you?"

Sif began to walk, a quick stride that barely jostled her at all. "It would not be the first time. I believe that honor belongs to the night where you introduced myself and the Warriors Three to a beverage known as tequila," she mused.

Darcy remembered that night. It was a fun night. The next morning a little less than fun, but the night before had more than made up for it.

She found that trying to focus on the vast expanse of stars or even the glowing rainbow of colors from the bridge that they crossed just made her head hurt even more. She closed her eyes to promises that all would be well soon, and really hoped it was the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

She next opened her eyes when she heard a rather insistent voice call her name. There was a slight accent and the addition of an honorific, and those two things made about as much sense as why she felt like she was wrapped in a cocoon of the softest silk scented with the best incense from her favorite Ren Faire.

Her mind caught up to that thought, mainly the part about being wrapped up and nearly immobile. Memories of being tied up and shoved into a metal coffin blended with those of being hung like a slab of beef and she really needed to move, preferably now, but the blanket was tight and there were walls on either side and she felt her breaths become suffocatingly short and more than a little wheezy until the very kind voice reminded her, "Breathe, Lady Darcy."

She tried to, really she did. But everything was pressing in and it was all too much until it wasn't, until the cocoon was drawn away and the shadows that danced across her eyelids reminded her that she still hadn't actually opened her eyes and so she did so and found an extremely patient looking Sif sitting next to her, leaning over the low walls that barely held her in place, pretty golden blanket in hand.

"Sorry," she said, still gasping for air. "I just-"

"You woke and did not know where," Sif supplied for her. "You have had a trying occurrence and your mind needs as much time to heal as your body. Perhaps more."

Darcy nodded because she wasn't sure what else to do. She then tried to push herself up to see just where the hell she was, and found the action wasn't nearly as easy as she had hoped. While the pain had gone down to maybe a five from the previous twelve on a scale of ten, it was still most definitely there. She looked down at her wrists since they were the most obvious and right there in front of her and found faint red lines where the raw skin had been. Her palms were crisscrossed with the same, and the skin pulled in uncomfortable ways when she tried to stretch her fingers outward.

She had thought Asgardian healing methods were more advanced than this. Actually, no, she knew they were after both seeing them in action and hearing epic tales of great feats. A particular accident involving Jane and flammability came to mind, and she remembered her friend being placed in what looked to be a stasis chamber for a couple of days before she came out all shiny and new without a scratch on her. A chamber that looked remarkably like the one she was in now, though she hadn't noticed that at first what with the blinding fear.

Which meant something had happened. Something beyond the kidnapping and less than heroic escape.

She had the distinct feeling that said something involved her soulmate or mates and so she took as deep of a breath as she dared, finding her ribs still hurt, and asked, "What did they do?"

Sif smiled wide and true. "You know your matches well," she said with more than a hint of approval.

She pulled back and let Darcy sit up on her own to survey the room. As suspected, it looked like the one Jane had been in. It might have even been the same one for all she knew. Shiny gold and polished marble and dark wood that made her want to do her best Effie Trinket impression. This time, she was the one that got to lay down in the cushiony bed with the high walls and the protective shield that had thankfully been removed before she woke. The guard at the door was new though, as was the fact no one save for him, Sif, and herself were present.

"Do I want to know what I did to warrant a security detail on another planet? Not to mention the whole getting short-changed on the whole miraculous healing thing you guys usually have going on?" she asked with a wince. She knew she had probably broke some major rule by calling for Heimdall, but he had actually answered and had even said he had made the choice to do so, so she wasn't exactly sure why she would be the one to be punished. Then again, she was on an alien planet with alien laws and her political science degree was reminding her of its existence, so there was that.

There was a dull thud, just the barest echo in the almost empty chamber. The guard flexed his fingers against the hilt of his sword but otherwise did not move. Sif looked mildly impressed.

Darcy cocked her head to the side and tried to actively listen for more clues as to just what was going on. When she heard it, she was tempted to bang her head against something solid save for the part where she so recently had done that and still had the very vivid memory of it atop the mild lingering headache.

"I can hear her! She's awake! Just let me-"

"Thing One and Thing Two are here, aren't they?" she asked with a sigh. At Sif's nod, she went with the assumption that they had heard her before at normal volume, so she raised her voice slightly to make a point and asked, "Thing One and Thing Two are making asses of themselves, aren't they?"

The commotion outside ceased and even the guard looked amused. It was Sif who replied, "They worry for you. Greatly. Please remember the state you arrived in and realize that is how they last saw you. They wish to see for themselves that you are alive and well."

"Mother cocks," Darcy muttered under her breath. At the questioning look she received, she explained, "Like mother hens, but with boy parts."

She wasn't certain if Allspeak translated the concept or not, but Sif seemed to understand anyway if her grin was anything to go by. "Do you wish to receive them, or return to your healing slumber?"

"I should probably let them in before they cause even more of an intergalactic incident," Darcy mused. She looked between the door and her current protector and asked, "Are they in trouble?"

Sif shook her head, ponytail of long hair flowing back and forth in a nearly hypnotic manner. "Their actions are no worse than Hogun's when his own match was injured and have been taken as such," she assured her.

She signaled the guard in a way Darcy's did not quite catch, and then the large doors swung open without a sound to reveal James and Steve, arms still in motion as they continued their arguments with what appeared to be Fandral and Volstagg, the bustle of Asgardian everyday life providing backdrop for the scene. They paused mid-flail when they caught sight of her and then rushed into the room.

She noticed that both were in clean clothing distinctly lacking any blood or gore and so she whispered, "Um, how long have I been here anyway?"

Sif stood to allow the men to approach unimpeded. "Two days, nearly three," she replied. Then, with a pointed look at the men already climbing up the dais, she added, "Full healing would have taken an additional day and a half, but these matches of yours have grown impatient. One would have thought your welfare would have superseded their curiosity. However, one would be wrong."

Almost three days. Asgardian and not Midgardian, meaning slightly longer than the twenty-four hours a piece she was used to. Nearly a week of healing needed overall. The last they knew, she was pretty well busted up with a gun held to her head before she disappeared into a tornado of light. At this point she didn't know if she should be apologizing to them or to the Asgardians for making them this frazzled.

All thoughts of blame were pushed aside when she was enveloped in a metric ton of super soldier. Steve had reached her first and became a human octopus for the briefest of moments before he pulled back and gently cupped her face in his hands. He ran his thumbs down her temples, the skin still sensitive enough that she assumed bruises remained, before he placed the gentlest of kisses atop her forehead. "You're alive," he breathed before nuzzling his nose against her own.

"I believe he doubted the veracity of my assurances," Sif complained, but there was humor to her tone.

Captain Contrite turned to look at her now, embarrassment writ across his features. "I'm sorry," he said, and truly sounded it. "I just needed to see for myself. Thor mentioned she had been placed in stasis and, well, we don't exactly have a good track record with that."

While Steve and Sif discussed Thor's need for the elaboration of details, James took advantage of his distraction and bodily pushed his other match's hands away to replace them with one of metal against her cheek and the other cupped against the back of her head with belying gentleness. "Please don't do that again, doll," he whispered. He claimed her lips with his own, offering a kiss full of passion and feeling and serving as replacement for all the things he couldn't or wouldn't say. It kind of countermanded the whole reinforcement of not repeating her actions if this was her reward, and she told him as much when he pulled away.

He frowned at her then, eyes still lit with anger and worry, so she cut him off before he could start in on any foolish rant with, "I'm fine. You got there in time. I got out of there by thinking on my feet like you two always tell me to do. Not quite full self-rescue, but more of a team effort, right?"

He shook his head though. "You're not fine," he protested. He released her only to take up one of her hands, the fingers of his free hand tracing the redness and bruising that remained on her wrist while his eyes did the same for the rest of her body. 

It was then that she remembered the Asgardians had far different views than the Midgardians when it came to dress codes and protocols. They dressed for comfort and function, not to prevent accidental touches. To them, a mark match was something to be celebrated, not connived and manipulated. This meant that sleeves were shorter, necklines wider, fabric fine and thin despite its rich colors for anything that did not resemble battle dress. It also meant that she currently wore the equivalent of a hospital gown that revealed far more bruises than concealed them. At least there had been washing and brushing and such before they laid her down; she could not even imagine her hair after three days worth of drying blood and her breath definitely would have deterred the Buckster's method of welcoming her back.

"Thor had said your healing technologies far surpassed our own," Captain Protective began, his own eyes following the same path as Sergeant Serious' had. "We had thought..."

If Sif was offended by his words, she did not show it. "Her wounds were quite severe. Using standard Midgardian methods, she would have had weeks if not months of recovery time. She is well on her way, but the process has been interrupted." She looked them both up and down shrewdly before she added, "The process can resume if you two are willing to cease your hindering ways."

Darcy patted what she could reach of both of her Boys and offered her personal wishes of, "Can we continue hinder-free? 'Cuz Asgardian healing totally rocks and has totally reduced the level of suck. I mean, we're at Almost Tolerable now, but I kind of want to see if we can reach Completely Suck Free, you know?"

"Are you in pain?" James asked at the same time Steve inquired, "Where do you hurt?"

"Pretty much everywhere," she admitted, figuring it answered them both. "Lady Sif has been kind enough not to tell me all the details, probably figuring my nightmares are going to be technicolor enough, but feel free to ask, assuage that curiosity, all that jazz."

"I can speak to them while you resume your healing," Sif offered.

"See what I mean about being awesome and kind and more words than I totally can think of right now?" Darcy said. She did her best to smile, but it might not have worked as well as she thought given the looks she received for her efforts. Her Boys were still doing their best to bodily shield her from the world, be it Asgard or Earth, but there were enough shiny surfaces for her to catch a glimpse of the black and blue that decorated pretty much an entire side of her face. Mix that with the red marks on her wrists, the fingers that were still slightly swollen, and ribs that actively ached, and she figured she looked as much of a mess as she felt.

James gently lowered her back against the extremely comfortable pillows and tucked a wayward strand of hair out of her way before he whispered, "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," she insisted.

"Really, this one is," he insisted right back.

"Because you are personally responsible for Hydra being douchebags?" she baited dryly. She shook her head, which resulted in another strand of hair being tucked just so. "Just promise me that someone looked after Geno and his boys? And that..." She choked up and couldn't voice the words. It was stupid, but she just could not. Of all the things to start to tear up about...

"Frecks is fine," Steve assured her. "He got shoved into a cupboard, but the vet says he doesn't have a scratch on him."

"Same can't be said of the ones that put him there," James added with the slightest hint of a smirk. "Though he did eat his weight in cat food to comfort himself." That was fair, even though she suspected they got him the fancy stuff that would be hard to break him of when she got back. 

"Geno's boys should all make it, but Danny's going to be in the ICU for a while," Steve told her, and she felt a tiny bit of her her tension unlock. "They're under assumed names and the place is under repairs and... you need to rest." The last part was added on when Sif pointedly cleared her throat. 

Steve kissed her bruised knuckles and tucked them against her chest, and then James pulled the Magical Healing Blanket of Awesome just so and brushed his lips against her forehead. The freaky not-quite solid shield started to slide back into place, but whatever was pumped in to knock her out had already started working before she could freak out. Instead, she drifted off to the quiet murmur of a certain Asgardian warrior talking about skull fractures and contusions and she had the distinct feeling her mother cocks were going to be unbearable for the near future, and possibly the far one as well.

When she next awoke, Thor wanted to party. When the Prince of an entire planet wants to party, you damn well party. Two certain someones were hesitant about the whole thing, which led to a discussion on cultural norms that was shortly followed by Thor himself explaining why one celebrated seeing the light of day after the darkness of battle.

She was dragged away almost as soon as she sat up on her own, and fitted into a dress to die for, all flowing and blue with hints of the preferred shade of Asagardian red sewn in as accents in honor of her matches. Her hair was brushed within an inch of its life and twisted up into something that looked complex but was held in place with a single barrette that somehow even coordinated with her shoes. She was keeping the shoes. Dear deity of choice, she was keeping the shoes. They looked like leather, fit like slippers, and would likely outlast her mortal existence. 

Besides, her own clothing had been covered in blood and things best left unmentioned and there was no way they were going to let her sit at a Prince's table in that. At least her soulmates had given in enough to be dressed to match versus the usual leather, denim, and khaki that were their standard wear. They looked good. They looked damn good. 

She would have traditionally been seated to Thor's left, but the big guy understood the whole friendship thing so Jane sat beside him and her beside her best friend. Steve sat on her other side and James made up the last of that wing of the table, obstinately in what was undoubtedly seen as a protective position or some such thing. 

Like he would take on a horde of alien warriors. 

Like he would even need to given that they were Thor's guests. 

Like any of that mattered to him in the least.

Sif and the Warriors Three sat along Thor's right and only people that they personally approved even got near the table, likely for her Boys' peace of mind. There was food, there was song, there were flagons of mead that kept getting taken away from her. Thankfully, there was also Jane with a flask and Boys that were somewhat distracted when the showing off portion of the evening began. Asgardian Warriors were built and were just plain impressive when they put their minds to it. Even bonded and overprotective super soldiers could appreciate the sight.

They caught her on third draught anyway and issued the expected protest. Of all people, it was Jane who defended her right to get sloshed. Not that she would. She and Jane were the only non-enhanced and non-Asgardian guests at this little shindig, and had been gifted with the appropriately watered down version of the good stuff. Regardless, Jane mentioned how it was rude to refuse a hostess and that, as Thor's match, she was both hostess and the alien equivalent to a Princess in waiting or some such thing. To be honest, Darcy had the feeling Jane was making it up as she went along. Thor's amused glances solidified that thought, and her repeated lectures to her Boys about diplomacy over the preceding few weeks sealed the deal to make them back down at least slightly. She relented and treated it as one of what she was sure to be many compromises and sipped from a small cup instead of doing shots.

The night drew to a close soon enough, and they were offered quarters to rest in before their return to Midgard. She was tempted, even though she had technically done nothing but sleep for the past several days. She had a very vivid memory from her last Asgardian stay of the best pillowcase ever, the fabric smooth to the touch and just the proper level of cool against her skin all night long. She had been tempted to steal it, but figured it wasn't worth an intergalactic incident with the possibility of getting harassed for samples back home just for a ridiculously unnecessary luxury.

James looked to Steve though, who tried to clear his throat and be all diplomatic and subtle and she could have told them that was totally not needed with their current host. "You wish to return home," Thor guessed, not offended in the least.

Steve looked everywhere but his teammate's eyes and gave the half-assed excuse of, "She has her cat, and..."

"Far more than her feline friend needs seeing to," Thor said knowingly. He gestured towards the giant glowing bridge that lay just outside the heavy open doors and encouraged, "Come, let's put your minds to rest and know that you go with my blessing."

Which is how she found herself whooshed through the Bifrost, afterimages of all things bright and shiny staining her retinas, after offering her profuse thanks to Heimdall one more time. She was less than steady on her feet after that particular physics-redefining roller coaster ride, but found such trivial things like standing were not actually needed when Super Soulmate Number One scooped her up and into his arms at the slightest wobble.

"I can walk, you know," she protested. He just gave her a look as he carried her from the little open area next to the tower that Stark had set aside for Asgardian arrivals.

Liam from Medical was waiting just inside the entrance, tablet in hand. "We did not know you would be returning this morning, but have a room set aside and a doctor can-"

"No," Bucky growled, as in actual bear-like growl.

Liam was used to dealing with the Avengers though, and only blinked twice before he tried, "By all reports Ms. Lewis was seriously injured. Asgardian medical techniques aside, protocols dictate-"

"You're not going to win this one," Steve cut him off. He didn't even try to stop Bucky, only held out a hand as if ready to move Liam to the side if needed instead. It wasn't because Liam wasn't stupid, and Darcy just waved as she was carried by.

Sergeant Overkill continued to hold her throughout the brief elevator ride up to their floor. He carried her past a door that she remembered being there but never having an entry pad attached to it before. "Your new apartment," he explained as if it were as simple as that. "Cat's already settled and we'll show it to you later," he continued as he walked right past it.

"Do I get a say in this?" she asked, but all three of them knew she wasn't really going to protest. Not after the last week.

"The studio is covered in bullet holes and blood. We've tried to salvage what we could, and replace anything you might need right away. Stark says to bill him for the rest," Steve told her as he unlocked the door to the place he shared with the guy yet to put her down. It wasn't a full answer, and was barely an explanation, but she had the feeling that was the most she was going to get for now.

James carried her past the kitchen, and then past the living room. He continued down the hallway past what had originally been a spare room but was now made up in her favorite colors and didn't stop until he reached the main bedroom. Then and only then did he finally meet her eyes. Protective was an understatement for what she saw there. So were pained and hurt and wanting.

Steve stepped up to her with damned near the same expression mirrored on his own features. While Bucky held her in place, he slipped off one and then the other of her extremely comfortable shoes and chucked them haphazardly over his shoulder to land with a quiet thump against the carpet.

"Please don't lose those, they are like the bestest pair I have ever had the pleasure of stealing from an alien congregation," she pleaded.

He didn't even smile at her antics. He simply cupped her face impossibly gently in his giant hands and kissed her with a passion that could not even roughly be called restrained.

James finally got with the program and reluctantly lowered her to stand of her own accord, toes sinking deeply into the plush rug. He didn't let go though, not completely. Instead, he turned her around to face him and repeated their match's actions with equal intensity. Steve took advantage of her current position and began to both search out and release all the tiny little clasps that held her fancy dress together.

"Is this the celebratory sex part?" she asked against James' lips. "Because I am so on board with that."

He didn't look through her so much as look at every single pore and freckle as though they held the secrets of the universe, and that's when she knew something else entirely was going on.

Steve found the last little pseudo-button and began to slide the dress off of her shoulders, fingertips tracing every inch of freshly exposed skin. James released her hair from its barrette and tossed the probably priceless piece to the side to join with her shoes. His fingers combed through the resulting waves before they pressed feather-light against her scalp. Again and again, he ran his fingers through the strands, thumbs tracing where she knew her temple had connected with concrete more than once as if needing to reassure himself that no fracture remained.

"I'm fine," she insisted. She turned her head slightly to try to press a kiss into his palm. She missed, but managed a glancing blow against his soul mark instead. He still didn't stop.

"You weren't," he ground out, and the raw emotion to his words made her heart ache in sympathy.

She tried to reach out to him, to hold him and reassure him and distract him, but soon found this was most definitely a time in which she was to sit back and let him seek out what he needed. He had been there for her in her time of distress before, and she told herself that she was simply doing the same thing for him now. It wasn't exactly in her nature to be well-behaved and docile, and her Boys would probably freak if she tried, but she could give them this, could let them have their reassurance on their own terms even if inside she thought they were being all stubborn and ridiculous about everything.

Her dress pooled at her feet, but Steve's hands still continued with their caress/physical confirmation of her lack of injuries. He traced down her shoulders to her once injured elbow, lips following in their path, paying attention to every inch, every bone, every finger right down to her pinky when he finally reached it.

James started to repeat the process on the other side, but never made it quite that far. His fingers did, ghosting over her skin until their very tips rested against her own, but his face he buried in the crook of her neck, breath hot and damp against her mark, stubble rough against her collarbone and cheek. He grabbed her hand fully, latched onto it with a grip both gentle and unrelenting at the same time, lips now pressed up against her pulse in a poor approximation of a kiss. The sound he made, the one she could barely hear despite being pressed up as close as humanly possible, was some sort of weird amalgamation of a breath and a keen and a sob and she lightly scratched at the nape of his neck to let him know she really was there in response.

For his part, Steve busied himself with the under-corset she wore, deft fingers making short work of the laces and grommets. She didn't know if he had a sudden interest in Asgardian fashion aesthetics since he sucked at the Midgardian version or if it was leftover knowledge of helping the girls of his troupe during his USO days, but he most certainly knew what he was doing and she kind of appreciated the expediency. The lightweight yet sturdy lingerie was pulled away, and the simple almost-undies were given the same treatment. Soon enough, she stood between them naked as the day she was born.

James still hadn't let go, but Steve drew his hands over her back, down across her ass, and then even further to her legs and ankles. He somehow managed the fine line between caress and tickle, even though it took damn near all of her restraint to stay in place and let him have his fill. He paid special attention to the places she knew had been bruised and singed, her outfit left in an Asgardian trash heap as unsalvageable from the dirt and tears and burns. When he reached her feet, he gently raised one and then the other, pulling away the crumpled remains of her once damn near perfect dress to deposit it unceremoniously with everything else.

He didn't stop there. Darcy watched as he yanked off James' new boots and efficiently divested him of what clothing he could while their match refused to let go of her. The shirt was managed only when Steve placed the cool metal of his free hand against the curve of Darcy's hip before forcing him to release her long enough to pull the sleeve free. He gripped on again soon enough, but she really didn't have the heart to protest.

Free of any remaining restrictions, James finally moved. He guided her to the bed and helped her situate herself against the mound of pillows near the top. The bed dipped when Steve rejoined them, now free of his own clothing, and James reluctantly let go of her hand only to place it soundly in Steve's waiting own, waiting until those large fingers closed around her much smaller ones before he dared to begin.

There was an almost frantic energy in the air in direct contrast with how slowly James moved. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheekbones, and her temples. He drew each earlobe gently between his lips before he peppered kisses down the length of her neck and collarbone. His teeth just barely scraped against the curve of her shoulder while his hands began to cup and stroke lower and lower, lips almost reluctantly following in their wake. He didn't linger at any of her standard erogenous zones, but her body flooded with a knowing heat anyway.

His careful examination continued until his palms rested against the arch of her feet, eyes still tracing her uncovered skin, searching for scrapes and bruises that simply were not there, were gone save for in the memories of every person currently wrapped up in his current antics.

"Do you need me to roll over?" she asked, voice not much more than a whisper. Every nerve ending sang and she very much would like him to move on to the inevitable crescendo, but she knew he needed this, knew they all did if she was going to be remotely honest with herself. Her mind was far from settled and she found a solace in his actions that she hoped he shared.

He looked torn, every muscle tensed, eyes still searing into her soul when they weren't looking for ghosts. He was hard, erection ignored where it lay against his thigh, fingers and lips his preferred method of connection at the present. His hands twitched, and she curled her toes against them in response.

"Her back is healed, Buck," Steve promised. He kissed the fingers he still held with his own, but gave their match his space for now. "I can vouch for it myself. She doesn't have a scratch on her."

"I'm fine," she insisted again. 

Two sets of eyes rose to meet her own and she could read their expressions even louder than words had they bothered to speak them: She wasn't fine. She hadn't been fine. She had damned near died and they wanted to make very, very sure that this was not some horrible dream about to turn into a nightmare the second they looked away. She understood because every time she closed her eyes she saw James frozen in place, surrounded by those that would take him from her, fighting to even blink let alone breathe.

"I wasn't, but I am now," she amended. She squeezed Steve's hand and pushed the ball of her foot against James' palm before she traced her toes down to the mark on his wrist. "We're home. We're safe. We're together," she reminded them, and herself at the same time.

James let out a shaky breath before he crawled his way back up her body, intentions far less searching and far more deliberate than before. He slotted himself between her outstretched legs and kissed a path from her navel to her breastbone, metal hand cupping and stroking while his other hand found alternate destinations. She gasped when his fingers danced across her folds, and then again when two sank deep within her without preamble, curled to press against the spot that always made her writhe. She was wet enough that they slid in and out easily, and she felt him shudder where he was pressed up against her.

He raised his head from where his mouth had latched on over the curve of her right breast. "I..." he started, but faltered in making any actual request.

She understood though, knew what he wanted, knew what their bodies told them they needed. "It's okay," she promised. Any other words died on her lips as he shifted his position, fingers sliding out of her to line himself up and begin to press slowly inward.

"Buck, are you sure she's..." Steve protested, but she hushed him with a wave of her free hand.

"She's sure," she told him, words fading into a groan as she was so beautifully filled.

Bucky wasn't precisely small and she wasn't precisely as ready as usual and she felt the stretch and the slightest amount of friction. She pushed her hips up toward the source of it all, wanting more anyway. Her legs wrapped around him and drew him close and he went far more than willingly, pressing further and further until there simply wasn't anywhere to go.

She expected the frantic pace of the kisses they had shared when they first returned, the overwhelming possessive urges, the force of their want echoed in their bodies as they sank together again and again. There was none of that though, only slow and steady, only gentle touches that seemed to egg her on and stoke a fire even more, only the complete and utter feeling of _sensation_ that washed over her body in waves as he rocked against her.

It felt like she floated on that sensation for hours, every nerve sparking and bright, every heartbeat a pulse that reverberated straight to her core. James was everywhere and nowhere all at once, only her grip on Steve anchoring her against it all, his lips against her fingertips, his hand gripped tight in her own. When she finally came, it was like an afterthought, her vision whiting out against the bright light it had been surrounded by for so long.

James followed her over that edge, shuddered and shook and gasped her name over and over again, covered her bodily and refused to let go until her free hand scraped against his nape once more. He lifted his head from where it had been pillowed on her breast and, with his hair hanging in curling strands in front of his eyes, it seemed as though he finally saw her for the first time since this whole thing began. 

She smiled shakily up at him and tried to catch her breath. He must have realized how difficult a task that was with a several hundred pound super soldier wrapped around her like a limpet because he raised himself up onto his elbows, still touching in damn near every way but now at least granting her the air she so desperately needed.

She lowered her legs to let her feet unceremoniously bounce off of the soft mattress. They, like every other part of her, still shook with barely contained vibrations. She was still floating on feeling, James' hand rubbing gentle circles against her skin in a way that was everything but soothing. He nudged her cheek with the tip of his nose and she tilted her head back to meet him, lips careful and almost chaste despite their positions.

"Are you...?" he asked, but didn't seem to be able to finish the thought.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she teased. His eyes were still shadowed with concern though, so she relented and promised, "I am so very much more than good right now."

He kissed her again and she melted into it, body lax despite the thrum of energy that still seemed to course through her. "Good," he said, voice not much more than a whisper. "Because Stevie's been so behaved and patient that I think he's about to explode." 

She turned to look at their match and saw the hint of desperation in his eyes even though he did nothing more than maintain his grip on her hand and press his lips to the skin of her bare shoulder. "Exploding would be bad," she agreed. She offered a smile and asked, "What do you say, soldier?"

It turned out he really didn't say much at all. He surged upwards and captured her lips with a passion that soon became a clash of teeth and tongues. She'd like to say she gave as good as she got, but she'd be wrong. The sedate pace of James was the polar opposite of what Steve offered now, and she needed a moment to mentally cycle back up to his level.

Her Boys took advantage of that moment and used it to shift and reposition themselves, and her as well. James was now braced up against the pillows instead and he pulled her tightly to him, her back flush against his chest with one hand resting just above the curve of her hips. His other hand engulfed her smaller own, replacing Steve's which was busy tracing over every inch of her body that he could currently reach.

For his part, Steve continued to damn near devour her, pressing frantic kisses to her lips and neck and jawline. He shifted and ran his palms down her arms only to move to grasp at a breast or shoulder or the back of her head, holding her in place as much if not more than James did while his teeth followed his earlier path as a gentle scrape against her flesh.

There was none of the quiet coaxing that she was used to with him. Instead, he lifted one of her legs up and over that of James and slid in deep without preamble. She threw her head back and matched his moan at the fullness, at the tightness, at the utter heat that seemed to ignite at their connection. It wasn't enough for him though, and he pulled back out only to slam right back in with a force that pushed her up against her living backrest and made James wrap a metal arm around her waist to help hold her in place.

She keened as he repeated the action again and again. He scratched lightly along her thigh as he fumbled to get a grip, then pushed it up and back until the cool metal of the back of James' hand bit against the front of it, opening her even further to him. The new angle made her gasp with pleasure as he hit just the right spot, rushing her to her peak faster than she thought was possible. He didn't stop there though, and continued to fuck her through her orgasm, only the way his groans increased in pitch any sign that he felt her tighten like a vice around him. She rode wave after wave until it was almost too much, until she felt like she was going to burst right out of her skin.

"Let go," she heard James whisper. She had no idea if he was talking to her or Steve but it didn't matter as Steve thrust in one more time and came with a muted howl that sent her spiraling after him even when she didn't think she had any more in her to give.

Steve collapsed on top of her, her leg trapped at the weirdest angle for a ten count before he rolled off of her and instantly began to chant apologies. She tried to reach for him before he could escape completely, limply smacking Bucky's hand to make him release her enough to give her leeway to grab him by the wrist and pull him close. James helped in his own way by latching onto his shoulder and yanking until he faceplanted against them both.

"Thanks, Buck," he said, voice muffled against two seriously overheating bodies.

"Don't fuck a girl and run, it's rude," James admonished, a tiny hint of his usual playfulness rising to the surface. He released Steve's shoulder to ruffle his sweaty hair before he wrapped his arms around his matches in a way that clearly indicated he had no intentions of letting go anytime soon.

"It wasn't... I didn't..." Steve floundered. He reminded Darcy of the stories Bucky loved to tell of back when he was scrawny and tiny and had even less of a way with women than now. "I would never..."

Darcy decided to pity him, for now at least. She was wrapped in a post-coital haze and could be generous or something. "I love you too," she told him.

She felt both men tense and freeze beside her before both latched on even tighter than before. "Oof," she said as she both tried to catch her breath and push their admittedly sticky bodies off of her. They backed up, but only slightly, and she could feel their questioning gaze as much as actually see it. "Yes, love. Yes, both of you. Yes, this is more than just sex or adrenaline talking," she promised. 

She really did not protest when her words resulted in more orgasms as well as intense full-contact cuddling as she was utterly surrounded by her soulmates.

She drifted off to sleep despite her best intentions and wished she could say she was surprised by the nightmare that woke her but that would have been a lie. Trapped in darkness, struggling to move, hearing a taunting voice promise pain and the slow suffering of everyone she loved. She had been promised that all of the remaining Hydra operatives were taken care of, one way or another, but that did nothing to quell the frantic panic of the recesses of her mind.

She freed herself of her human blankets and rushed to the bathroom to lock the door, ignoring the worry that they concealed so very poorly. She didn't hurl, but it was a near thing. Instead, she splashed water on her face and took deep breaths and completely avoided looking into the mirror for fear of what would be reflected back at her.

She stole one of Steve's shirts and pulled on a spare pair of leggings from the dresser that had been slowly filling with her belongings for weeks. She didn't bother telling them that she was fine this time because she really truly wasn't and they would have seen through the lie before she even opened her mouth. She simply offered a shaky smile and wandered across the hall to what she knew would be her new and likely rarely used apartment, leaving both doors open for when her Boys inevitably followed.

She had to give them credit as they waited nearly twenty whole minutes to do so. When they did, they found her curled into a tiny ball atop a couch that was not nearly as lumpy as her own, Frecks cuddled tightly in her arms. The windows had their fancy shades drawn to block out the midday sun, leaving her in quiet shadows. Her eyes were wet but her breathing had returned to nearly normal, just a lingering tightness in her chest that she couldn't shake.

"If either one of you start with platitudes or mention the phrase 'PTSD' I will kick you in your super serumed balls," she warned. She'd have to dig out her older pair of Docs, or maybe that pair of steel toed boots Jane had made her get back in New Mexico, but she'd do it.

Steve sat down gingerly beside her while Bucky plopped down directly on the floor in front of her. "What do you need?" he asked.

"None of this to have ever happened?" she tried. She sniffed at her ridiculousness. "I mean the sex part is awesome, don't get me wrong, and the whole being there and being just so you.... but the whole danger and violence and kidnapping parts? Yeah, those can go take a flying leap."

"Part and parcel, doll," James told her sympathetically. He reached up and rubbed soothing circles on her calf. Freckles decided this was a prime opportunity to have his ears scritched, and Sergeant Pushover easily complied.

"Stark's fairly smart. Maybe he's built a time machine by now," Steve mused.

Darcy snorted, and then regretted it. "Ouch, don't make me laugh," she complained without thinking.

Unfortunately, that just put both men on high alert. "Did we hurt you?" Steve asked while James growled something that sounded suspiciously like he knew he couldn't trust alien tech.

"Not you, I swear," she told them both. She raised her hands in front of her as if to ward them off and Frecks, the little traitor, used the opportunity to jump into James' lap instead.

"Then what's wrong?" Steve asked annoyingly reasonably. She wasn't sure if she loved or despised that part of him.

She shook her head and tried to find the words. When they came, they came in a rush and she had no idea if they understood them at all because she wasn't precisely sure she did herself. "So, like, that's not the first time Asgardian tech has been used on a human, right? Jane got hella hurt and Thor whisked her away and, bam, a few days later she was fine. Only not really. Any time she'd get tired or overworked or whatever, which, let's be real, it's Jane so it happened, for like a week or two she still felt this sorta ghost pain right where she had been burned. They ran some tests and couldn't find anything and chalked it up to Asgard versus Midgard and all that jazz. But it was there, but it wasn't, you know?"

She pushed her fingers through her hair and was not at all surprised to find it in tangles. Her fingers themselves ached and she held them out in front of her as she remembered how swollen and misshapen they had been even though there wasn't even the hint of a bruise on them now.

Steve took her hand into his own and began the gentlest of massages. It was phantom pain, she knew this, and yet it seemed to recede at his touch. "So, you're telling us you're tired?" he guessed. She had expected him to latch onto the "not fine" part of the equation since that had been such a common theme, but was kinda grateful he hadn't taken the obvious path.

"Yeah," she admitted and sank deeper into the cushions. She knew what his next question would be, so she beat him to the punch. "But sleep equals nightmares that are more like vivid memories mixed with what could have happened and I really don't want to deal with those right now," she explained. She tried to hide her face in the curtain of her hair, but should have known that wasn't going to fly even before Steve paused to tuck the strands neatly behind her ear instead. 

"I have an idea," Bucky said. He rose and deposited Frecks between them as he gathered what he needed for his plan. A plan that amounted to a nest of blankets, a mountainous bowl of macaroni and cheese delivered from her usual standby, and a marathon of Netflix. It would have involved a bottle of top shelf tequila, but Steve put the kabosh on that citing exhaustion and false something or another that he had read in an article once and was utterly convinced was the truth.

She was snuggled between the two of them, drowsy and content, the heat of their bodies seeming to ease the ache in her own, when Steve asked, "Are we eventually going to talk about it?"

Bucky keyed up the next episode and shook his head. "Only if she's ready. You can't force these things, punk. Would have thought you'd have learned that with me."

Darcy accepted the fresh popped bowl of popcorn and let him tug the blankets back into place just so. "We'll talk, eventually," she relented with a sigh. "But it might be less about horrific kidnappings and more about how we had a ton of unprotected sex right after an alien god of fertility gave us his personal blessing."

The men on either side of her froze and she took advantage of the moment to steal a gulp from Bucky's soda and press play.

"He's not an actual god, you know this, right?" Steve asked, but there was the slightest hint of hysteria to his tone. 

She patted him on the leg and said, "You and your super soldier swimmers keep telling yourself that."

He balked but his counterpart just wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She didn't mention how he held her just a little bit tighter than usual and he didn't mention the way she always relaxed that little extra bit when it was his metal arm versus his flesh one in the protective position. Sue her, she liked to feel safe. Or at least as safe as they were going to get in a world full of super villains and lackeys and corrupt organizations and their remnants.

Things were not perfect, in truth they had a long way to go to even get to okay at this point and she figured everyone involved would probably have a more than a few stutters and stops along the way. It was simply how life was, at least for them. The way her Boys held her tight though, the way they understood her need for vice over responsibility, the way they simply understood her and her craziness in general made her take a moment and realize that maybe, just maybe, the universe knew what it was doing after all. 

Or at least faked it very well.

 

End.


End file.
